Crossing Wires
by MarleeJames
Summary: Sequel to Crossing Over. In case you were wondering, it wasn't boring. Not so much a ride of a lifetime as a struggle to live for a lifetime, mind you, but even when it got bad, Dean and Sam never gave up so, of course, how could I? We found a place that we could rest and breathe, found out more about Heaven and Hell than I ever wanted to know, found something special. No slash.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

* * *

_**AN:**__ Okay, folks, here we go again! My thanks to BlackIceWitch for a wonderful cover for this story and for helping me with all the ins and outs of planning, plotting and character development issues, as well as just making sure that I made sense! Once again, I've borrowed some of BlackIceWitch's concepts, this time of the Men of Letters organisation, as I think they work beautifully. The story they appeared in has now sadly been removed, but paraphrased, will live on here!_

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It was a lot harder to explain my slackness in not keeping track of the darned contraceptives than I thought it would be. I ummed and aahed for a few minutes and saw Dean's gaze drop to the empty pack I was clutching, and come to his own conclusions. He took a step back as he stared at the pack.

"I'm…um…not sure…um…how long it's been…" I stammered and looked down at the pack as well.

"You're pregnant?"

The thought of that – the _sound_ of it! – sent the air whooshing out of my lungs and turned my knees to some jellified substance that I knew was going to be incapable of supporting me.

"No," I squawked at him, hearing the high pitch and crack in my voice with an internal wince. "I mean, no, I – uh – I don't think so," I tried again, shaking my head forcefully. "I – uh – I – well, I don't know."

From the stunned look on his face, I figured that his knees were also on the verge of collapsing under him and I tried to find some way to make it seem…I don't know…less of a world-changer. Or yet another responsibility being laid on his shoulders.

"I'll take a test in the morning," I promised, the words falling over each other as I got them out, my brain in feverish high-gear as it immediately leapt to the worst case scenario. We lived in a cabin in the woods that was barely big enough for the five adults here. Where on earth – how on earth – would a baby fit into this situation?

"Uh…" he said, finally lifting his gaze from the pack and looking at me. His expression softened slightly and I couldn't imagine what I looked like to have caused that. Probably on the point of hysteria? "We'll, um, figure it out. If you are, I mean."

He took a slightly unsteady step toward me and I realised straight away that he was a long, long way from being able to process the whole what-next part. Fatherhood was something he clearly hadn't been considering.

I didn't know what to say either. As a matter of timing, I don't think it could've been any worse. On the other hand, my churning emotions insisted, there was no way I could take the alternative course of action. I wasn't religious by any definition of the term and maybe it was just my biological clock ticking away, but…if there was a child, it was his child, and for some reason I wasn't looking all that closely at, that changed everything I'd ever thought or felt.

Dean seemed to come to some sort of decision, taking another step toward me and dropping his arm around my shoulders to steer me out of the bathroom and back toward the bed.

"Come on," he said, his voice deeper than it'd been a minute ago. "Nothing we can do about it right now."

We got into bed and he flicked off the bedside lamp. In the almost complete darkness of the room, it felt like our thoughts, the unspoken ones, were crowding around, thick as a fog in spring, smothering in their intensity. We were lying side by side, unmoving and I guessed he was probably staring open-eyed at the ceiling the same as I was. I wasn't actually thinking about the actuality of it, you know? I was trying to, but my thoughts kept veering away and yammering about other things. Whistling in the wind, I guess, trying to pretend that there was nothing wrong, nothing earth-shattering had happened, all good in the 'hood here.

Honestly, sometimes my capacity for self-deception is really quite depressing.

After a time – and it could've been minutes or hours, who could tell? – Dean let out a noisy exhale and rolled over, sliding his arm under my pillow.

"It'll be okay," he said quietly, his breath gusting against my cheek.

I wasn't nearly as sure that it would, but I nodded. "Sure."

There's a very strange dynamic at work in these circumstances, I found. A minute before, the idea of sex was probably the furthest thing from my mind, something on par with performing plastic surgery on, say, grizzly bears, for instance. Then he moved closer and I felt a rush of heat tremble through me, curling up my toes and I turned automatically toward him, half my mind thinking, well, it's too late now. The other half kicked in a second later and reminded me that I didn't know that for sure and I swear the same thought process must have gone through his mind because he kind of froze with his mouth about a quarter-inch from mine.

"Uh, maybe we should, um, wait to find out?" he said, pulling back a little. My thought exactly, except that skin-to-skin, it was harder to remember why that was a good idea.

"Right," I managed to get out, a flush of red creeping up my neck from my hypocrisy.

I felt his exhale against my neck and another thought occurred to me, no doubt driven by a less-than-ladylike desperation. "Unless you have some –"

"Yeah!" he exclaimed, his voice endearingly breaking high. A second later he slumped down. "Uh, no…I didn't think…uh, well we weren't…" he trailed off uncomfortably and the despondent tone would've been funny if not for the situation.

"Uh, well…" I said inadequately.

"Yeah, I guess…" he murmured reluctantly.

Desire is one of those things that when you let it out of the box, it's darned near impossible to stuff back in and the more I tried not to think about it, the worse it all got. Even the small movement as we breathed in and out created a friction that became more and more demanding, like an itch you can't reach. Ha ha.

In the room, the silence stretched out, and I could feel myself tensing up, could feel him tensing as well, little by little. There was a solution, of course…any normal person would have gotten up and found somewhere else to sleep…but that didn't occur to me and if it occurred to Dean, he must have repressed it, preferring the torture of the current impasse.

He moved his head a bit, and I felt the brush of his lips over my neck, shuddering slightly with the feelings that provoked. As I turned my head to look at him, he raised his head and that was the end of any hope of restraint. He moved the half-inch needed and I moved as well, and caution and everything else was forgotten when his lips met mine.

"P'bly bad idea," he growled, when the kiss broke and he moved down, mouth leaving a fiery trail along the skin of my neck.

I arched up involuntarily against him. "Y-yeah, bad idea, really tempting fate here," I agreed mindlessly, making no effort to stop him. It was as intoxicating as ever, possibly even more so since it was a bad idea, and my ability to think clearly was vanishing rapidly. "Oh…the heck–"

"–with it," he finished the thought, voice gruff.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

We stopped after driving for nine hours, in Sheridan, Wyoming. From the way Bobby was creeping closer as we turned off the interstate, I thought he was probably pretty surprised. It wasn't dark and Dean would normally have kept going. Behind Bobby's truck, Sam and Lauren followed along in Sam's SUV.

Despite the whole day together, alone, in the close confines of the car, we hadn't talked about it. Conversation had been pretty thin the whole way, actually, something that for me, at least, was due to finally thinking about all the repercussions I was going to be facing if the pee-on-a-stick test came back positive. I'd already decided that getting more than one was probably a good idea. I didn't know what Dean had been thinking about, although he'd asked several times over the course of the drive if I was okay, if I was comfortable, if it was too hot or too cold in the car, which I guess showed that it was certainly at the forefront of his mind.

As soon as we'd checked into the small motel near the outskirts of the town, we got back into the Impala and drove down the main street, Dean grunting in satisfaction as he spotted the all-night drugstore and swerved into its parking lot. We walked in together and split up at the door, me heading over to the ladies section of the pharmacy, and him searching the aisles for the items we'd been missing last night.

There are a surprising number of pregnancy test kits on the market. I looked at all of them, reading the blurbs about their ease of use, their accuracy, the disclaimers on getting a doctor's confirmation rather than relying on the tests themselves and all the other junk pharmaceutical companies seem to like to plaster their packaging with. I'd used a couple of the brands before, and I chose one of each plus another one I hadn't, just to keep it fair. I was going to need to drink a heck of a lot of water to manage to use all three, I thought uncomfortably, holding the boxes close to my chest as I made my way up to the counter. The lady serving behind the cash register was obviously trained in discretion because she didn't even lift an eyebrow at the purchases, just rang them up and ask if it was cash or charge in a bored voice. Dean came up behind me as she was packing the boxes carefully into a paper bag and he raised his eyebrows.

"Three of them?"

I took the bag and the change and looked at the dozen or so boxes of condoms he dropped on the counter, arching a brow back at him. "Better safe than sorry, right?" I said.

He looked away with a defensive kind of shrug and I headed back to the car. There's something so obvious about a couple when she's clutching a bag full of pregnancy tests and he's just cleared out the condom rack, don't you think?

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Sam and Lauren had done the food run by the time we got back to the motel, and no one asked where we'd been, thankfully. Dumping our purchases in our room, we walked next door to Bobby's and ate together there, the smell of burgers and tacos and skinless grilled chicken filling the small area pungently. When it was all cleared away, Bobby pulled out the local map of Benoit and stabbed a finger at the cemetery.

"Won't get there 'til after dark now," he said, with a pointed look at Dean who ignored it.

Lauren said, "Benoit's funeral home has gone online. We found a layout of the cemetery and the four men mentioned in the article are buried in a private plot, to one side of the grounds. It won't be hard to find."

"No movement on the tracking bug either," Sam said, the app on his phone showing a stable red dot in Boston. "They're taking their time about getting out here."

"Maybe they already know what's in the grave?" I suggested diffidently. I can't say I was really interested myself in what body was lying in the grave of Albert Magnus. The paper bag lying on the bed in the room next door was preying on my mind.

"Or they're onto it and left it sitting somewhere in Boston nowhere near them," Bobby pointed out acidly.

"We'll head out early tomorrow," Dean said, getting up. He threw a sideways glance at me and I knew he was as anxious to check the contents of that paper bag as I was. "See you in the morning."

I got up and ignored Lauren's speculative look. Tomorrow, if I let her get within a yard of me on her own, I would be grilled about the early stop, the disappearing act and our rush to leave the room now, I thought with an inward sigh.

Following Dean out and along the path to our room, I was sloshing slightly from the two extra large sodas I'd just consumed. If that didn't give enough to perform all three tests, I would regard as a sign, I decided, somewhat morosely.

Dean didn't say anything when he opened the door and held it for me, his gaze cutting straight to the bed. I nodded without stopping, picking up the bag and heading for the bathroom. Once in there, I opened all three packs and read the instructions a couple of times, just to make sure I would know what I was doing. The first two needed collection, the third one could be performed 'in stream' as it were. I decided to attempt that one first and then collect for the other, setting out the sticks, cups, droppers and cards as neatly as a surgical array along the bathroom's narrow vanity. Apparently I had an over-rated view of my capacity for fine control.

Happily, two sodas produced a volume that was more than enough, even without the stop-start finesse I'd been so sure I would have.

Each test required some waiting time and after a couple of minutes, Dean knocked on the door impatiently.

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"You messing with me?"

"No, they have waiting times," I told him, looking at all three tests. All three had a slightly different waiting time, of course.

"Huh."

Looking at the door, I shrugged to myself and opened it. "See for yourself."

He came in and looked at the stick and cards lined up with military precision along the counter. "What are you looking for?"

"The stick is supposed to turn blue," I said, pointing to it. "That one shows a line under the control line if it's positive. And that one shows a donut if it's positive."

"A donut?"

"A ring," I clarified. For some reason, the instructions referred to it as a donut. Ring too sensitive? Donut more common? Who knew?

"Uh huh," he said, looking at them. "How long?"

I looked at my watch. "Another minute and a half."

We stood there, eyes glued to the three tests and it was the longest ninety seconds in all of recorded history.

The stick remained stubbornly white. The single line on the test card remained stubbornly single. And no donut – or ring – formed on the third one. Dean was looking at his watch as obsessively as I was looking at mine.

"Does that mean –" he asked, turning to look at me. I checked each test again and nodded, bending to grab the small trash can.

"Yeah, I think so." I swept the empty boxes, wrappings, sticks, cups, cards and instruction sheets into the can and set it back down again, not looking at him as I went to the sink to wash my hands for the third time.

I didn't want to be pregnant, not now, I really didn't. The sadness that was leaking in around that conviction was inexplicable, I thought, scrubbing my nails vigorously. It was not only the worst time imaginable, with all that was going on, but we hadn't sorted out ourselves yet, so it would've only added pressure to a relationship that didn't need any more pressure. All good points. Didn't change the disappointment.

"You okay?" he asked me, and I looked into the mirror above the sink. He stood behind me, his expression worried.

"Yeah, sure, all good," I said quickly, turning off the taps and slipping away from him to dry my hands on the towel by the shower. "I'm relieved."

He nodded uncertainly and backed out of the room and I leaned against the wall for a moment or two, trying to force myself into believing that. I _was_ relieved. Mostly. For the most part.

Turning on the taps in the shower, I stripped off mechanically and stepped under the gush of water, washing everything about as obsessively and thoroughly as I had done with my hands. Maybe I thought I could scrub the thoughts and feelings away? I don't know. I got out after a few minutes and dried off, and leaned forward to wipe the steam from the mirror. I looked the same, you know, in the reflection. I stared a bit longer, unable to work out what it was I was trying to see.

The main room was dim, just the nightstand light on. Dean was sitting at the table, a bottle of beer almost full beside his elbow, staring, apparently, at nothing. He looked around when I walked out, getting up from the chair. I had the towel in my hands and I hurriedly raised it, pretending to dry my hair a bit more.

"Plenty of hot water left if you want a shower," I said, muffled from inside the towel's fluffy depths.

"Terry –" he started to say then stopped. I peered out from between the towel's folds to look at him.

"Never mind." He turned and went into the bathroom and a moment later I heard the water running.

When he came out, a few minutes later, I was in bed, the covers drawn up over my shoulder and my eyes closed. It wasn't his fault and he sure didn't do anything wrong, but there was a weird kind of empty feeling that made me feel cold and alone, and he seemed to sense it, staying on his side of the bed and turning out the light.

"Did you want to be –?" he asked awkwardly after several minutes of silence.

I shook my head. "No, I didn't. Really. I just – you know, I thought, and then…"

"Yeah."

The flatness of his voice made me wonder and I turned slowly over toward him. "Did you?"

He didn't say anything for a few moments, and I waited nervously in the dark.

"I guess so," he said, very softly, rolling onto his shoulder. "I don't know. I was thinking about it today."

"So was I."

"Do you want to have a kid? I mean, not now, but, uh, sometime? In the future?" he asked hesitantly and I wished I could see his face.

It was a tough question and one I didn't feel comfortable with answering right now. An act of fate was one thing, but an active plan? That was something else entirely. I'd never planned anything in my life, and I wasn't sure I could start now.

"Uh…um, yeah, maybe," I hedged. "Do you?"

From the pause that followed, I had a feeling he was having the same difficulty as I was making a solid answer to that.

"Yeah," he said finally, his voice so quiet I could hardly hear him. "Sometime."

He inched closer and I did the same and his arms came around me. Unlike the previous evening's flashpoint, I don't think either of us wanted anything more than comfort and sleep. The boxes of rubbers remained unopened on the nightstand.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

We hit Benoit a little before nightfall and found a motel first, then piled into the Impala to make the short drive across town to the cemetery. The funeral home's diagram of the plots made it easy to find the secluded and fenced in private section and Lauren and I both stopped and looked at the unicursal hexagram that had been wrought into the iron gates.

"Iron all the way 'round," Bobby remarked as he walked past us, following the brothers to a row of graves.

Dean read out the names, his flashlight illuminating each of the headstones in turn. "David Ackers, Ted Bowen, Albert Magnus, Larry Ganem…whoa, what's wrong with this picture?"

The flashlight beam flicked from stone to stone. On three of the markers, the unicursal hexagram had been carved deeply but it was missing from the last. Instead, there was a different symbol. Bobby leaned closer to it, brushing the weathered stone with one hand.

"That's the Haitian glyph for talkin' to the dead," he said gruffly, getting to his feet. "A bit obvious but these idjits seem to think they're the only ones who know anything about anything."

"So we're digging up ol' Larry here?" Dean asked, handing the flashlight to me and picking up a shovel.

"That'd be my bet," Bobby agreed, taking a step back as Sam and Dean drove their shovels into the turf.

I might've said it before…watching people dig up a grave is a really long and boring business. Lauren was looking over the rest of the enclosed plot, making muttered comments about rowan, oak and ash trees and Bobby was leaning on tombstone, eyes half-closed under the brim of his cap, either dozing or thinking about something else entirely. I kept the flashlight down where the brothers were digging and tried not to yawn too blatantly.

Even when the soil is not too compacted, doesn't contain too many rocks and hasn't settled for too long, it does take a while to dig a hole that's six foot long by three foot wide by six foot deep. And this grave had been sitting undisturbed for more than fifty years, the soil settled and hard. Bit by bit, Dean and Sam removed their jackets, then their shirts as they grunted and dug and threw the soil out, until they were digging in their tee shirts, which had darkened with sweat. It was definitely a way of keeping fit, I thought, watching them get deeper and deeper into the hole.

The clunk of metal on wood was a relief. Bobby's eyes snapped open, Lauren returned to the graveside and I felt my curiosity drive out the boredom as I inched closer to the edge and shone the flashlight down at Dean's feet.

They threw the shovels out and knelt to clear the dirt from the coffin's lid, Bobby passing a pry bar to Dean as soon as it was all visible. The creepy screak of old, rusted nails being prised free of the wood filled the cemetery and I looked around nervously. Flickering lights, weird, shivery noises…no wonder people considered cemeteries haunted, I thought to myself. Not to mention the ew factor of actually digging up dead bodies.

"Huh." Dean looked down at the body blankly then up to Bobby. "Uh, World War One is a bit early for these guys, isn't it?"

The body, skeletal remains mostly, was dressed in an old soldier's uniform, a number of medals pinned to the left side of the chest.

"Got me," Bobby said with a frown. "Any of those medals got a name on them?"

Sam crouched and checked them, lifting up one that was on a chain. "Captain Thomas J. Carey, III," he read.

"Well, let's go find the good Captain and see what he has to say," Bobby grunted.

Dean and Sam groaned in unison at the thought of shovelling all the dirt they'd carefully excavated out of the grave back into it but they closed the coffin lid and climbed out and picked up their shovels without further comments. I watched the play of muscle under their soaked tee shirts admiringly and kept the light steady on the grave.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It wasn't far off sunrise when we got back to the motel, the brothers disappearing into the respective bathrooms of their rooms while Lauren, Bobby and I went to Bobby's room and pulled out the computers.

"Got him," Bobby said a few minutes later. "Okay, got confirmation from two sources, county and KG&E. Tom Carey is living in Lebanon, collecting his pension and a very happy one hundred and twenty-seven year old."

"Lebanon?" Lauren frowned at him. "You know that's –"

"The exact centre of the country?" Bobby cut her off, looking up. "Yeah, knew that."

"That's not a coincidence," I said, hiding another yawn behind my hand.

"No coincidences in this life," Bobby agreed sourly.

The door opened and Dean and Sam came in, wet hair sticking out in all directions and dressed in clean clothes.

"What'd we miss?" Dean asked as he veered to the kitchenette and fridge for a beer.

"Found your WWI vet," Bobby said, closing the laptop and leaning back in his chair as Dean handed him a beer. "In Lebanon, living the good life."

Sam sat down next to Lauren and looked at him. "Lebanon?" he said, his brow creasing up a bit. "You know that's the exact contiguous –"

"Centre of the country? Yeah, already been through that non-coincidence," Bobby said, finishing his beer and thumping the bottle on the table. "Alright, we got time to grab a couple hours of zzz's before we go see him, so clear out."

He got up and walked pointed to the door, opening it and holding it for us. I can't say I wasn't relieved by the thought of a bit of sleep, it'd been a really, really long day.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Larry Ganem's house was a neatly painted two storey frame on a street full of similar neatly painted frame homes, with a lush and well-tended garden out the front. Five of us standing on the porch really crowded out the space, and when Sam knocked on the door, and a woman came to open it, her eyes widened at the sight.

"Can I – uh, help you?" she asked, looking from Sam around the rest of us and back to him.

"We'd like to speak to Captain Thomas Carey, ma'am, about some old friends of his," Sam said, making his voice soft and soothing. He really was good at this bit, being non-threatening and boy-scoutish and I saw both Dean and Bobby look away, the corners of their mouths tucking in as they obviously repressed comments about puppy-dog eyes and the like.

"Oh, uh…" She looked uncertainly back down the hall. "Could I let him know which old friends?"

"David Ackers, ma'am," Bobby said, pushing his cap back on his head slightly. "And Henry Winchester."

"One moment," she said, closing the door.

She was back a couple of minutes later, opening the door wide and standing to one side as we trooped in. "Larry's in the parlour," she said, clearly privy to the whole scam. "Just down the hall and the second door on the left."

Sam led the way, followed by Lauren, Bobby, Dean and I. The woman followed me and paused at the doorway as we entered the room.

"Could I offer anyone refreshments?" she asked.

"No, thank you," Sam said, his gaze fixed on the man in the wheelchair near the fireplace. "We're fine, Mrs Ganem."

She smiled at him. "Mrs Carey, actually."

"Uh, oh…sorry," Sam said.

"Vera, we'll be a few minutes," the man, Larry, I presumed, said. "Maybe these folks might feel more like something later?"

She nodded as if this was a common situation between them and left the room.

Larry looked around at us carefully. He'd been a big man, once, his frame shrunken with age and infirmity. A twisting scar ran from his forehead, dragging down across the right eye-socket and to his cheek, and I could see shiny burn scars over his hands and neck and the side of his face.

"Who're you?" he barked, looking at Bobby.

"Bobby Singer. Hunter," Bobby said with more patience than I'd given him credit for. "These boys are Henry's grandsons, Dean and Sam Winchester," he added. "And this is Professor Lauren Saunders –"

Ganem looked at Lauren, his eyes narrowing. "Nephilim," he said and she looked back at him, startled.

"How did –"

"Oh, I've spoken to my share of the other entities on this plane," he said comfortably, turning his gaze on me. "And you?"

"Uh…" I hesitated, not sure of what to say. "Therese Alcott, sir."

"No special history? Or powers?"

"'Fraid not," I replied, a little sharply. Just an ordinary tag-along, I thought, looking down at the floor.

"You have news about Henry?" Larry asked, his attention back on Sam. "Sit down, give me a bad neck to have look up that far."

He waved an impatient hand at the sofa and chairs grouped around the coffee table and we found ourselves seats. Not for the first time since I'd come to this world, I was wondering what I was doing here. Aside from Crowley's desire to use my soul, there didn't seem to be anything I could add to the brothers' quest. Beside me, Dean moved a little closer, his thigh pressing against mine and I glanced at him. He was watching Larry, but I got the impression he'd sensed what I was feeling anyway.

"Henry Winchester disappeared the night of the fire that took out our group, in '58," Ganem was saying, his head tilted slightly in favour of the missing eye. "I never saw or heard from him again."

"We met a Legacy, Dominic Wickfield, last week," Sam said. "He was surprised about the Albert Magnus grave."

"Wickfield! Ha! I bet he was," Ganem said with a humourless chuckle. "Bunch of self-righteous prats, those Boston boys." He scratched his brow. "When I got out of the hospital, David and Ted had been interred by Wickfield's superiors, I would imagine. Henry had gone and I had a number of other aliases, one of which Vera, my wife, used when I was hospitalised. I put the Magnus tombstone there to alert the others if they came looking. Apparently they never did."

"They know about it now," Bobby told him. "Wickfield thinks that these two have some kind of claim on whatever your group had set up, being as they're surviving family?"

"Yes," Larry said, nodding. "Yes, they do. Legacies are primarily passed down from generation to generation. Henry should have been around to pass it on to his son, John. And then John to you. I take it that never happened."

"First we heard of you guys was last week," Dean said, his lip curling up. "And we still haven't had a straight answer to what exactly it is we were supposed to be a part of."

"Not surprising," Larry said with a shrug. "Not much of a secret society if we talked of our business with anyone, eh?"

He changed position, wincing a little. "I spent my lifetime building on what the order had already collected. Mythology, ritual, lore and artefacts of the world we live in and the world of darkness and shadows that lives behind it, the histories of the other dimensional planes of existence, the demonologies, angelologies and the low-down on every god, demi-god, force of nature and elemental spirit that has been to known to mankind since the dawn of Time. We are, at our most basic level, occultists and chroniclers of the shadow world. But we are also teachers and guardians of that knowledge." He looked at Bobby. "We provide the knowledge to enable your sort to go out and address the balance of power between light and darkness."

"Whoopty-doo," Bobby said sourly, bridling a little at the 'your sort' comment, I think. "I never even heard of you."

"No," Larry acknowledged with a wry smile. "I don't suppose you have. Only the most skilled of the oldest hunting families was allowed into the inner sanctums of our libraries. That –" He held up his hand as if he could see Bobby's face working in readiness for another sarcastic protest. "– is not to say that there aren't many fine hunters who have stumbled into the life, however, most of those who are driven to become hunters from personal tragedies, who have not been raised to be hunters, I think you would agree are not generally-speaking the most stable individuals."

I could see Bobby wanted to argue the point but couldn't, not even from his own personal experience. That had to be galling.

"That collection of knowledge is hidden and warded and guarded and is the safest place in the world," Larry continued, unfazed by the simmer of the hunters surrounding him. "Only one key allows access and only a Legacy bloodline can use the key."

Dean and Sam exchanged a look. "Do you know where the key is?" Dean asked.

"Yes, I do, I placed it there myself."

"Allll-right," Sam said, brow creasing up questioningly. "Do we need to do some sort of test?"

"No," Larry said, clearly enjoying himself. If Vera hadn't returned to the room with a tray full of coffees that very instant, I think Larry would've gotten himself some education in the finer and more inventive points of cursing, going purely off the rock-like tension in the thigh that was pressed against mine. "Vera, could you bring the Salina safety box deposit key, m'dear?"

She nodded, setting the tray on the table between us and left to get it.

"Help yourselves, there are some details you need to know."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

By the time we stumbled out of the place, I was hoping that mine was the only head close to exploding with the density of information the guy had rammed at us.

"We'll get the key," Sam said, rubbing the heel of his hand over his forehead. "We'll meet you at the coordinates in two hours."

Dean nodded, turning for the Impala with Bobby and I trotting along behind his long – and from the back, annoyed –stride.

"You tryin' to give me a heart attack?" Bobby panted as we caught beside the gleaming black car.

"Should be working harder, Bobby," Dean shot back but it was automatic, he was clearly thinking of other things. "You buy that hunter's bloodlines thing?"

Bobby looked over the car's roof at him, and I knew that he knew what Dean was talking about. I did too. The Cupid had made a big deal of Heaven forcibly manipulating the Campbells and Winchesters union. He hadn't said why, but being as Dean had been the only man capable of breaking the first Seal and Sam the only one capable of breaking the last, it'd seemed obvious.

"You think this is going back further than we thought?" Bobby asked.

Dean frowned and shrugged, unlocking the doors. "I don't know," he said uncertainly. "Just seems like it's not entirely random."

Larry had spoken of a bunker, of some sort. I hadn't gotten a good visualisation from the way he'd described it, other than to imagine some sort of Aladdin's cave of supernatural-related treasures, spilling from room to room. He'd said the library was the second largest of all the groups of the order, and that most of the world's collected artefacts of power were stored there as well. He talked of the turn of the century (the previous one) when there'd been nine Legacies living and working there, with three Associates – or Initiates, I wasn't too sure on that difference either – aiding their research, all of them going on field trips, liaising with hunters…it'd sounded pretty organised to be honest, and I'd seen Sam's eyes light up as he'd imagined a set up like that. Judging by Lauren's small smile, I guessed she'd seen his excitement as well.

Dean had been far more cautious about the old man's tales. He hadn't shown so much as a suddenly indrawn breath in the way of excitement and he'd questioned everything. Most of the time, Larry had fobbed him off with the line that the bunker would show them what to do. None of us had really gotten what that meant, I'd thought.

It was a five-minute drive back to the motel and Bobby muttered something about it being a long day, likely to go on all night and some people needed their rest. I was complete agreement with him, and I think Dean looked relieved as well. There wasn't much more we could do until Sam and Lauren got back and by golly, that bed looked comfortable.

As it turned out, we didn't get any sleep, but we did get past the uncertainties of the last few days.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Dean got out of the car and looked around. In every direction there were trees.

"You sure the coordinates are right?" he asked, looking over his shoulder as Sam got out of the SUV.

"Yeah, this is it."

There was one building there, a tiny utility hut for KG&E, surrounded by trees and undergrowth and about ten yards from the road. Dean jerked his head toward it. "On the small side for what Larry was talking about, isn't it?"

Sam frowned, holding his phone up and staring at the screen. "This can't be right."

"No shit, Sherlock," Dean mumbled, leaning back against the car.

It was a few minutes past five o'clock and the sun had already dropped below the horizon, the air that purply-grey colour it goes in between day and night. I stayed in the car and hid my yawns behind both hands.

"He said it was warded and guarded and hidden," Lauren reminded them, getting out of the other side of the SUV. "Do we have anything to break illusions, Bobby?"

"Not here," he said, shaking his head. "Back at the cabin, sure."

Getting out of the car, I shivered in the cool evening air. Everything looked real, the trees and road and hut, I mean. It was hard to believe that any illusion would have lichen growing on the wooden frame and paint peeling in little curly strips from the guttering.

The gravel road had been barely visible from the main road, hidden on a corner. We'd gone nearly a mile to come to this dead end, driving mostly under an overhanging canopy of trees. The road petered out thirty yards ahead of where the cars were parked, a dense line of saplings and suckering birches blocking it. But at the turnoff, there'd been no sign, not even a cryptic utility company one, to indicate to maintenance workers that the hut was there. And there usually are, you know? Signs, I mean, so that the techs can find their way around?

"Sam, try the key in that door," I suggested as I studied it.

He gave me a quizzical look but stepped off the road and walked to the hut, pulling a carved wooden box from his coat pocket. It was a snazzy little container, but no more difficult to open than a puzzle box and I wondered if someone in the order had just liked the ritual of opening it, instead of putting the old-fashioned and bulbous iron key on a ring.

As soon as the key touched the lock on the door, the entire world began to dissolve around us. Very, very weird sensation. It looked like a watercolour that someone has spilled water over, and the paints runs and thins out until the paper's mucky but the painting's gone.

The trees wavered and faded away, showing a much more straggly and scrubby wood in their place. Behind the hut, a hillside appeared, with a massive stone and brick building built into the side of it. Almost windowless, it towered up three or four stories above the ground, sigils and symbols, some familiar, some not, wreathing the walls in a very faint shimmering light that disappeared completely if you looked straight at them. The door Sam was standing in front of grew, kind of, turning to a dark metal, becoming taller and wider and round, and the key slid straight into a hole meant for it under a big whorled and knobbled doorknob.

When he turned it, there were a number of loud clanks and knocks, from somewhere in the building's wall. It sounded like a bank vault opening, although I'd only heard that sound in the movies about heists and those could've been enhanced by some foley editor.

Sam pulled at the door and it swung open, a round mouth of pitch black revealed behind it. I heard Dean snort and looked around. The road, which under the illusion had gone nowhere, now seemed to curve a little further around the bottom of the hill, still weed-infested gravel, but maybe a little better built than what we'd seen earlier.

"Open sesame," Bobby murmured and walked around a previously invisible wrought iron railing to the doorway, following Sam inside.

Dean walked in after him, his gun in his hand, and Lauren and I looked at each other.

"After you," she said to me with a grin.

"Oh no, I insist," I deadpanned back at her, waving a gracious hand at the black doorway. "Angelic beings definitely get to go into black holes first."

"Wimp," she said, passing me and following Dean.

"Why I'm still breathing," I agreed amiably.

Inside the door there was a small…uh, vestibule, I guess, and another, plain wooden door directly opposite. Sam didn't need a key for that, turning the handle and pushing it open. As soon as he did it, however, the front door closed behind me with a laborious groan and the clunking noises indicated that we were locked in.

Sam pulled the wood door closed again and Dean's flashlight beam hit me in the face as he lifted it and pointed it past me at the door. "Can you open that?"

Squinting and blinking, I turned around and felt for the handle, turning it. The clunking resumed and the door opened readily enough, the dusky light gently flooding in.

"Okay," Dean said, letting out an audible exhale.

Sam opened the inner door again and the outer door shut and by that time I'd heard enough of its clangs and clunks to last me a lifetime.

Three flashlight beams lit up the space on the other side of the door, not exactly illuminating much but giving an impression of a big void. I caught a glimpse of another elaborate wrought iron railing as Sam stepped through. Dean sidled along the wall, his light showing a big box further along the narrow balcony and I walked after him, looking around as much as I could. Big, dark and silent was the primary impression.

That changed when he opened the box, revealed to be a circuit box of some kind, and flipped the first old-fashioned lever switch up. For a minute, nothing seemed to happen, then there was a low-pitched vibration, felt first through my feet, then in my teeth and Sam and Bobby looked across from the other side of the curving balcony.

"Generators?" Sam asked no one in particular. Bobby nodded.

And the lights above us came on.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

Leaning over the railing, I looked up and then down. The room was enormous, and by that I mean public building/museum/art gallery enormous. The overhead lights were hanging from a ceiling that must have been at least thirty feet above the ground level, the balcony we were standing on about halfway between, and below, the room was an oval, with desks and cupboards and what looked like built-in computer banks around the walls and a huge table in the centre.

I looked along the curving balcony, seeing one of those small, caged elevators at the far end to the left, and a metal staircase that hugged the arc of the wall, leading down to the right and Dean flipped the rest of the switches in the box, lighting up another big room straight ahead.

Sam let out a long breath and Bobby muttered, "Sweet mother of God," in a hushed and awed tone.

The room was full of books. I don't mean, you know, had some shelves like a designer's idea of a library, I mean…_full_…of books. In the centre, I could see several long, polished wood tables with chairs around them. It was a library alright, but more like you'd see in a big city than in a private building in a tiny town.

Hurrying after Sam, Bobby and Lauren down the stairs, I glanced back at Dean who was walking more slowly, looking at everything, his expression cautious and slightly suspicious.

"What is it?" I asked, stopping as he caught up to me.

"Nothing," he said, lifting a shoulder in a shrug as he focussed on me. "You know me, I don't like surprises."

"Not even good ones?" I asked him as we walked down to the ground level. "This could be what you need?"

For a moment, he didn't answer, his gaze tracking around the very old communications set up, stopping on the table in the middle that had lit up, showing a map of the world painted onto the underlit glass surface. Then he looked back at me, his mouth lifting one side.

"Sometimes having what I need gets me into worse trouble than not having it," he said sardonically.

I couldn't think of what to say to that, since he might have been referring to a number of things and I didn't want to step into that spotlight by arrogantly assuming he was talking about me. I looked at him and he shrugged again, continuing down the stairs slowly enough for me to keep up.

At floor level, the equipment in the room announced itself as definitely being circa a long time ago. The radios had big yellow dials and vacuum tubes, and the bank of polished metal that I'd thought might be a computer looked like it'd been installed in the days when even the smallest processors took up entire rooms. Hundreds of small, coloured lights covered the surface, and I wondered if Sam was going to be able to figure it out or if we were going to have to find someone who'd worked for IBM – in the early days.

Sam, Lauren and Bobby were already lost in the stacks of the library. The shelving ran around the long, octagonal room, floor-to-ceiling and like the first room, the ceiling was high, two storeys at least. Shelves jutted out perpendicular to the walls in rows and rows. To the right, about halfway along the long wall, a big fireplace was surrounded by several plush and comfortable-looking club armchairs, with a polished oak sideboard that was covered in dusty decanters. Dean lifted an eyebrow at that and wandered over to check out the selection and I turned around, and looked back. On either side of the shallow flight of stairs that ran down to the first room we'd seen, more glass-fronted cupboards were stuffed with papers and books, and above them, dust-covered maps hung, the one to the left showing the continent of Europe, the one to the right, the Americas.

I could vaguely hear Bobby's continuous muttering as he found books he'd had, or still had, or had coveted for years, accompanied occasionally by little yips of excitement.

"C'mon, you geeks," Dean said impatiently after ten minutes of waiting for them to work their way through about a quarter of one side of the room. "Whole building to check out, you can drool over the reading matter later, okay?"

They emerged reluctantly from three different areas, grinning sheepishly, and all of them were carrying or clutching volumes in their arms. Dean exhaled and shook his head, and we split up as we found the doors to either side of the end of the room, heading left and right down what looked like identical halls. Whoever had built the place had done it all at one time, the floor coverings, wall treatments, vents, light fittings and custom-made carpeting were ubiquitous throughout and no one had ever even thought of renovating. Of course, the place had been shut down in '58, according to Wickfield and Larry, so perhaps the fashion had still seemed good at that time.

Dean and I headed left. Sam and Lauren took the right-hand hallway, and Bobby turned around and went back to the elevator in the first room, throwing something back over his shoulder about age and dignity and his knees.

Along the hall, there were several doors, the first few opening into what seemed to be spacious, private offices. They were all the same, even the furniture and the decanters on the bureaus were the same, but the shelving that covered one wall was filled with different books, and the framed paintings and prints that adorned the other walls seemed to be reflective of the personal taste of the previous occupants.

At the end of the hall, a large circular area had two doors and the elevator leading off as well as a really beautiful circular staircase leading both up and down. Dean looked at the choices with a bemused expression.

"How big you think this place is?" he asked, leaning over the banister to look down at the spiralling stairs, then tilting his head back to look up the centre.

"It looked like it was built into the hillside, from the outside," I said, opening the door closest to us. "Maybe there's a lot more down than there is up?"

"What's that?"

I looked around the room from the doorway. A very long dining table, with twelve elegantly carved chairs with matching upholstery in the order's colours and motif, took up the centre. Sideboards and dressers were stationed around the walls. Everything was amazing quality but coated so thickly in dust it was hard to tell what, exactly, it was made of.

"Dining room," I told him. "There's another door at the far end –" I leaned back and looked at the curving wall to my right. "Probably going to the same place that one is," I finished. Which could only be the –

"Kitchen? Really?" Dean asked, a bright spot of enthusiasm in his voice. He walked to the other door and I walked through the dining room and, after passing through a tall, narrow room filled with glass-fronted cupboards which in turn were filled with monogrammed fine china, we met in the kitchen.

Now, I don't want to give you the wrong impression here. It wasn't your basic suburban kitchen. Nope, no how. This room was huge and it was obviously designed by someone who'd spent their life with servants. Two massive black ranges took up one entire wall. Several sinks, deep and shallow were let into a long marble counter that reached the length of another wall. In the centre, two long island counters, one with a top of polished fine white marble and the other with a six-inch thick top of hardwood gave more preparation area than I'd ever seen in my life. More to the centre of the room, a long, scrubbed pine table with bench seats and chairs scattered around it made me think of weekend-long parties of the sort the Big Chill made popular back in the day. Copper, iron and stainless steel pots, pans and tureens hung from the rack over the island counters, all coated in the same grey mantling of dust. High windows above the sink counter let in a little grimy-coloured grey light but the four overhead lights made up for that lack. Cupboards and dressers and open shelves held pretty much every kitchen implement, device and helper I'd ever seen, with the obvious exception of the electric appliances that filled most modern kitchens. The walls were painted a very pale creamy yellow, the cupboards and trim were painted what might have been a crisp white if they hadn't been dusty and dirty, and the floor was that diamond-pattern tile that's popular in most older, country homes, the big tiles white and the smaller ones a dark green.

Dean stared at the row of refrigerators that took up half of the wall leading to the butler's pantry, and I walked across the room to open the first of two other doors. It led into another big room, with utilitarian metal and timber shelving around the walls and up the centre. Ice chests took up the far wall and a number of clean, empty wooden barrels were grouped in that corner. Pantry, I thought. And what a one. I backed out and opened the second door, my hand reaching around for a light switch when I saw a staircase going down into a stygian blackness. The switch lit the stairs and lit up the sub-basement room below and I realised that this was the order's root cellar or whatever they'd thought the equivalent was. Going down a few steps, I could feel the difference in air temperature and dryness, and the empty wooden shelves and dozens more barrels lined against one wall seemed to be bear it out.

"Well," I said, turning around and coming back out into the kitchen. "If we ever managed to fill this place, we won't starve – ever."

"Good point," Dean said, looking over the fridges. They were electric, I saw, when I walked over and looked past him, but only just. The model before had probably run on kerosene.

"What is?"

"Stocking up," he said, flashing me a quick grin as he closed the door and walked around the fridge to the rear. There was a click and the fridge burped a little then started humming.

"We couldn't afford to fill half the cupboards here," I said, thinking he was joking.

"Yeah, we can," he said, going to the next one and turning it on. "Five of us here, we all gotta eat."

I thought about as he turned the other four fridges on. "You want to stay here?"

"Well, we'll see how it all looks, but I'd say there's enough room, wouldn't you?"

"Hmmm."

He walked back and looked at the two doors. "What're they?"

"Pantry and root cellar," I told him. "You do realise that we're five adults with no visible means of income or support?"

"Uh, well, Bobby's got that income from Rufus' estate –" he said, clearly not having thought about that before. "We'll get by."

"Hmmm," I repeated. Getting a job in Sioux Falls had been near-impossible. I wasn't real whoops on my chances in Lebanon. Or even the next town over. Not much call for script girls in the middle of Kansas and while I could type, I didn't think there was a huge demand even for secretaries here either.

Retracing our steps to the stairwell, we started to climb. On the next level there was a single hall that seemed to run right the way across the building. Dean opened the first door and whistled. I looked in past him.

It was a bedroom. Not too dissimilar to the sort of bedroom you might find at a very pricey, but old-fashioned hotel. The bed was somewhere between queen and a double, covered in a rich brocade spread with the order's symbol, the Aquarian Star, picked out in a contrasting golden thread in the centre. All the furniture seemed to be maple or oak, old, the wood glowing with colour and holding a soft patina of many years of being polished, dulled under the layer of dust. Nightstands stood sentry to either side of the bed, two highboys flanked the tall, narrow window, an elaborately carved and really, really big armoire was opposite the bed and a gorgeous roll-top desk took up the remaining wall. The floor was carpeted in the custom carpet but it was a lot plusher up here than it'd been in the halls or on the first floor. Brocade curtains, matching the bedspread, hung to either side of the window and the overhead light, high in the fifteen-foot ceilinged room, was actually a small chandelier.

Swanky.

If I'm giving the impression that I was walking around this place with my eyes bugging out of my head and my mouth hanging opening, well, that's probably because I was. To one side of the bed and its nightstand, another door stood partly open and Dean walked into the bedroom, going to the door straight away. I followed him and blinked as he turned on the light, stopping in the doorway. It was a bathroom. Well, the sort of bathroom you might expect from one of the really big hotel/casinos in Vegas. Not so much black and gold, but otherwise about the same size and with about the same fittings. The tub, a free-standing, enamelled cast iron thing that I'm sure would take five men to lift, stood next to the window, and had sigils of protection, I guessed, although I didn't know what they were protecting against, baked into the creamy enamel right around the rim. There was a big timber vanity with two shallow porcelain sinks to the left and a wide but not deep cupboard opposite with latticed doors holding towels, handtowels – well, you get it, I'm sure, just about everything every aspiring home-maker covets in the way of personal hygiene supplies. The floor was tiled with those tiny tiles and of course, there was the Star, picked out in gold-glaze, right in the middle.

"You think the hot water's gunna be good here?" Dean asked, his voice low and reverent as he stared at the tub and the overhanging shower fitting. I wondered briefly if this was one of the Holy Grails of his life, finding the ultimate hot water system.

"No clue," I said, a bit repressively. "Come on, you can drool over the bathroom fixtures later," I added, privately delighted to paraphrase his earlier impatient remark. He got it too, turning to give me a look as I backed out and headed for the door.

Like a big hotel, there was a lot of ground to cover and I had the feeling we hadn't even made much of a scratch on the surface of this place.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Three hours later, my feet were aching and I was wondering how much more there was to the place. We'd gathered back in the library and Bobby had miraculously found some firewood from somewhere and had lit the fire there, and hungry, but too tired to go out for take-out we were perched or sprawled on the armchairs, huddled around the fire and warming ourselves internally with the amazing liquor that the sideboard held.

Bobby had gone straight to the top floor and he reported the top two floors were more library, the very top floor he thought held the knowledge more pertinent to the world's populations of monsters and corporeal threats. The next one down, above the living quarters, held a huge range of books on magic, magical theory, practical magic, spells, divination and rituals. At that news, I could see both Lauren and Sam sort of twitching in their seats, as if they'd wanted to go straight up there and pore over the stuff immediately. God knows if it was willpower or just tiredness that kept them in place.

They'd gone to the hallway down to the right and had found a number of rooms holding collections of artefacts from cultures around the world. Past that they'd gone up the stairs like us and had found another wing of bedrooms with ensuite baths, which had sounded identical to the ones we'd seen. Adding the two lots together, there were extremely comfortable digs for twelve people in the building, probably for more, but based on what Larry had said, it seemed that was the full complement of Legacies plus initiates that each of the 'bunkers' supported.

Dean looked at his watch. "It's nearly one, maybe we should call it a night and keep going tomorrow?"

"You want to go back to the motel?" Sam asked him. I held my breath, hoping he'd say no. It might've been more familiar but the thought of getting up, getting in the car…yada, yada…was enough to make my bones ache.

"No, we'll give this place a chance," Dean said noncommittally, hiding the fact that he wanted to try the shower. He'd turned the taps on in the first bedroom's bathroom and had been rewarded with clean water that had run hot after a few minutes. So hot that the bathroom had been enveloped in steam less than two minutes later. The grin hadn't come off for minutes.

"Generators providing power, and some sort of boiler as well," Sam mused "This place is set up like a nuclear shelter."

"Yeah, six-star bomb shelter," Dean agreed with a yawn. "Think the car'll be okay out there tonight?"

"Safer than at the motel," Lauren said, hiding her own responsive yawn behind one hand. "I think those illusion spells are activated and deactivated by that key. It's inside, they'll all be back."

And that was all Dean really needed to know.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I found a whole roomful of linen, in between bedrooms five and six, and gathered enough to make up the bed in the room Dean'd picked. Unsurprisingly, that was the first one he'd seen, at the start of the hall in the southern wing. Southern wing, phew-eee, doesn't that sound…well, you know.

I made the bed while he was in the shower, half-laughing-at and half-trying-to-ignore the deep groans and moans of pleasure that came in an almost continuous stream through the open door, accompanied by clouds of fragrantly-scented steam. Watching it billow against the ceiling, I was impressed by how quickly it seemed to be drawn into the high iron vents, and it occurred to me for the first time how well-ventilated the place had to be to smell reasonably fresh (if dusty) after more than fifty years of being unoccupied. I'd like to say my thoughts continued along those lofty lines but unfortunately I can't. The linen supplies hadn't included fitted sheets and I was distracted by trying to get the bottom sheet tucked in tight enough not to move.

"Terry, c'mere, you gotta try this," Dean called and I straightened the cover and plumped the pillows, wondering at his sudden generosity in the matter of hot water supply. Granted, I'd only seen him in motel rooms, where the hot water was usually neither really hot nor very plentiful. He still guarded his time in there jealously.

Still, you know, if Dean Winchester invites you to join him in the shower, do you refuse?

He was right, the pressure was like being gently beaten by a soft broom and the heat was something I'd only imagined might exist in a Swedish sauna room. I fought to control my involuntary noises, feeling rather hypocritical of all the sniggering I'd done at his expense earlier but after a while, I gave up and I heard him laugh with the first audible sigh.

"Told you," he said, way too smugly. Opening my eyes slightly and squinting at him over my shoulder, I saw that he was enjoying the entire situation, probably far too much. There wasn't a trace of a shadow in his eyes and the only lines on his face were the laugh-lines. I gave a half-hearted swipe at him with the bar of soap, which shot out of my hand at the incautious movement and landed on the tiled floor almost at the door, and decided magnanimously that he could have his fun. It wasn't like it was an everyday occurrence.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The bed was soft and warm and comfortable and getting my eyelids open was going to require at least a gallon of coffee, I thought, rolling over when I felt the radiated heat beside me. Then I remembered. No coffee. No toast, even. Nothing but water. I shuddered.

"Wh'as wrong?" Dean mumbled into my hair.

"You're right," I told him. "We have to go and get some supplies."

One eye opened reluctantly and peered at me. "Now?"

"No coffee."

The pronouncement had much the same effect on him as it'd had on me and he rolled away, pushing the covers back and reaching for the pile of clothes on the floor by the bed, still half-asleep but driven to action.

Dressing was done in a very short time frame and we went downstairs to find Bobby sitting sourly at the kitchen table by himself. One look at his face and I knew what the first words out of his mouth were going to be.

"We're going now," I said. "Back as soon as we can."

"Bring something for breakfast," he shouted after us. "Not the grease feast!"

"Grease feast," Dean muttered as we climbed the stairs. "How's egg and bacon a grease feast?"

I could've pointed out the obvious but I left it. There are some things that should never be discussed on a day when coffee is not available.

Driving just a tad over the speed limit, we made Hays in an hour, finding a parking place just on seven o'clock, and found ourselves forced into an early-opening diner since we were convinced that the grocery stores couldn't possibly be open yet.

"Might as well have breakfast," Dean said, pushing into the place without waiting for an answer. When I followed him in, I couldn't disagree. The rich, pungent, aromatic smells filled me up and I sort of wafted along behind him, held up by the smorgasbord of smells. I have to admit it, I love the whole breakfast special thing, you know, the bacon, all crisply and curly next to a fried egg, not leathery but just a bit runny in the very middle, pancakes with maple syrup running off the edges and coating the bacon and egg with an interesting taste sensation, toast all gooey with butter…hmmmm…yeah, now I sound like Homer Simpson. Oh well. It was a nice bit of compatibility that we could share.

"Coffee, pancakes, eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, keep the refills coming," Dean machine-gunned out at the waitress who appeared beside our booth. She wrote it all down fast, apparently unfazed by the lack of courtesy. Perhaps she was used to seeing surly men in the early morning, uncivilised due to a lack of caffeine and carbs? She turned to me and I nodded.

"Same."

Dean leaned back on his side as she left, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. "Tell me when the coffee arrives."

I looked over and the waitress was already on her way back, a pot of coffee in one hand and two cups in the other. She set them down, poured the coffee and went to put the order in.

"Can we buy one of those coffee makers here, you think?" Dean asked, eyes still closed as he seemed to inhale most of his first cup.

Since the drip-filter coffee maker was possibly the most likely appliance to be found in every household, no matter how rich or how poor, I thought there was a good chance. "Uh huh."

"Good."

The food arrived and I ate voraciously, probably with much slurping and smacking of lips and other wonderful table manners. I pushed aside my feelings of guilt about Sam and Lauren and Bobby, all sitting in the empty kitchen, drinking glasses of water with rumbling stomachs.

When we got to the big supermarket, we both averted our eyes from the huge painted decal on the plate-glass front windows, showing that the store had been open for the last three hours. I mean, come on, we had to get the energy for this expedition, right?

Dean's shopping techniques had not improved with the practice of the last weeks. I spent a lot of time removing things from the cart as we wandered up and down the aisles as he seemed to be unable to imagine that our house-mates might have different tastes and might not actually welcome the six different varieties of pop-tarts. As I pulled another overload out of the cart while he was looking at something else, I thought it might be good training for shopping with kids.

"There you are!"

Dean guiltily dropped the chocolate cream-filled donuts he was holding and I guiltily dropped the four boxes of Count Chocula I was holding, at the sound of that vaguely familiar, accusing voice, both of us turning together to see Charlie striding down the long aisle toward us, her phone gripped in one hand.

"Charlie – what are you doing here?" Dean said, retrieving the donuts from the floor and stuffing them back on the shelf.

"Looking for you," she said, looking with interest at the contents of Dean's cart. I picked up the boxes and put them on the shelf beside me.

"Love those," she added as she watched me. She was dressed like some crazy neon sign, fluorescent green, soft vinyl cropped jacket straining across her considerable bust, skin-tight, purple jeans likewise straining at the seams over hourglass hips and both colours clashing screamingly with her flame-bright hair. A pair of dyed orange alligator skin cowboy boots completed the eye-searing ensemble and I wondered distractedly if she was colour-blind or just liked to stand out in a crowd.

"How'd you –"

"Secrets of the trade," she cut him off, turning back to face him. "I had you in Benoit, then you just dropped off the face of the earth."

"What's wrong?" I asked, and she waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the store front.

"Something is going on where I'm living right now," she said. "I've tried to work it out but it could be witchcraft, or ghosts, or even some kind of monster that I don't know about – I need help."

"Going on – how?" Dean asked, a mild exasperation in his voice.

"A bunch of my people were injured, four in the last two weeks," she told him. "Then last week, someone was killed."

"What the hell are you into?"

"Long story," she admitted. "If I help you overdose yourselves on sugar, will you come and take a look?"

She looked around and saw an empty cart sitting at the side of the row.

Dean glanced at me and rolled his eyes. I shrugged.

"We're not overdosing on sugar," I said firmly, adding oatmeal and wholegrain muesli to my cart and heading for the end of the breakfast aisle.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I swear I could hear Dean's credit card creak as the checkout lady totalled up the three cart's worth. It didn't break though, and we made it back to the car with enough food, general kitchen items and personal hygiene products to make the suspension sag noticeably at the rear.

"Do we need all this cleaning stuff?" Dean groused as he loaded the backseat and trunk, leaving a small area free for Charlie to wedge herself into. "It was the most expensive stuff on the bill!"

"You have seen the dust in that place, right?" I told him, stuffing bags into the well under the dash on my side of the car. "That doesn't come off without this stuff."

There was an indistinct mutter as he slammed the trunk shut and pushed the carts back. I got into the car carefully, gingerly inserting my feet between the various bags, and twisted around to look at Charlie.

"So, when you say 'a bunch of your people', you mean…?"

"Hmmm, well, I sort of joined a LARP community," she said, looking at her fingernails.

My mind went blank at that statement. "A what?"

"LARP – live action role playing – community," she clarified, looking over the bags beside her through the side window, presumably for Dean. "Can I do this all in one hit? You know I'm going to have to go through the details for them anyway, right?"

"Sure," I said, wracking my extremely thin knowledge of role-playing games. The last one I'd heard of had been Dungeons & Dragons, and even that had been when I was a teenager. Apparently there are a lot more now.

The driver's door opened and Dean got in, turning the key and looking at Charlie in the rear-view mirror. "Uh, this place is actually –" he started to say, then stopped, turning around in the seat and looking directly at her instead. "I need a favour and it's gunna sound weird but we're not going anywhere until you do it."

Charlie blinked at him in surprise. "Like what?"

"Like you need to take off that sweater and put it over your head, like a hood, 'cause nobody sees where we're going," he said bluntly and I felt my mouth drop open a little at that as well.

"What?" Charlie looked at him, her eyes widening dramatically.

"I'm serious," Dean said, turning off the engine again. "Think of it as an initiation."

She made a face at him, and looked at me. I was having a devil of a time keeping my face expressionless but I must've managed it because she frowned and with a great deal of sighing and groaning and fussing, pulled off her coat, then her sweater, pulled her coat back on and drew the black polar-fleece top over her head.

"Satisfied?" came the muffled yet still discernibly annoyed query from inside it.

"Yep," Dean said, turning back to the wheel and turning the key. He glanced at me as he pulled out, shaking his head slightly to indicate that this was going to be a conversation-less journey.

I was still too surprised to have started one anyway. It's all too easy to forget, when you think about the way the characters were portrayed in the show, that both Dean and Sam had survived a dangerous, heck, mostly deadly lifestyle for the last thirty-odd years. It hadn't been luck, Bobby had told me once. I believed him. Luck was too capricious a commodity to ever be able to rely on. It'd been looking at every situation with an eye to the consequences of any action. Dean hadn't really shown much of his well-hidden caution, but it was obviously there, lurking around, and while the secret-agent-ish request to our passenger had startled me, when I thought about it, it seemed like a good idea. What Charlie didn't know, she couldn't possibly tell anyone else. It would be pretty cool to have a place to hide that no one but us knew about.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"Can I take this off now?" Charlie asked peevishly as the car came to a halt in front of the KG&E hut.

"In a minute," Dean said, turning off the engine and rolling his eyes. The litany of complaints from the back seat had been more or less continuous for the entire last hour. He had the key on him and he got out, walking to the hut and putting the key into the lock. In seconds, the illusions of the woods and the hut had gone, and I got out of the car, opening the rear door.

"Okay, now you can take it off," I told Charlie, reaching in for bags of groceries.

Her eyes widened again when she looked around, gazing up at the building set into the hill. "Awesome."

"Yeah," Dean said, coming back up the steps followed by Sam and Lauren.

"Hey, Charlie," Sam said cheerfully. "Wait 'til you see the inside."

"Can't wait," she told him, looking up at Lauren. "Hi, I'm Charlie."

Sam blushed a little. "Sorry, Lauren, this is Charlie Bradbury," he said, leaning into the car to retrieve bags. "Charlie, Lauren Saunders."

"I'm pleased to meet you, at last," Lauren said graciously – or as graciously as possible considering she was carrying at least six, rustling grocery bags. "I was impressed by your skills with Roman Enterprises."

"Yeah, yeah, mutual admiration society meeting after we unload," Dean interrupted, walking between them to pop the trunk. "Everyone carries, Charlie."

She walked meekly around to the rear of the car as Lauren and I followed Sam down the stairs, festooned with bags.

"What the hell did you buy?" Sam asked me in a low voice when we walked in through the door.

"Everything," I told him dryly. "Can't you tell?"

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It took nearly an hour to square away the groceries and appliances – we'd bought an electric kettle, coffee-maker, four-slice toaster, toaster oven (I think that was just because Dean liked the look of it, the kitchen had about eight ovens), microwave oven and blender – and making a huge fresh pot of coffee, sat down around one of the long library tables as Charlie explained her case.

Bobby appeared to be having trouble looking at her outfit for long, rubbing his eyes from time to time. Sam and Lauren ate toast while they listened and Dean watched Charlie with a faint expression of amusement as she described what had happened to her since we'd seen her last.

"At first, it seemed, you know, like just inter-team rivalry," she was saying, hunching over her coffee. "Then one of the girls, Phyllis, uh, Phyllis Morton, she was hobbled. She's been in hospital for the last three weeks."

"Hobbled?" Bobby looked at her doubtfully.

"Both ankles broken, one in three places," Charlie clarified with a moue of distaste. "Last weekend, two more of my guys disappeared, and yesterday I found out that Ed had been murdered."

"Murdered – how?" Sam asked.

"Heh, um…apparently he was found in his apartment, quartered. He bled out," she said with a nervous little wave of her hand.

"Quartered?" Dean repeated. "You mean cut –?"

Charlie shook her head, staring at the tabletop. "No, he was…um…apparently pulled to pieces."

"Huh," Dean said after a moment's silence rang around the table at that news. I don't think anyone sitting there was short on the imagination required to visualise that scenario.

"Well, definitely sounds like our kind of thing," he said to Sam, his tone thoughtful. "And, uh, you guys are gonna be fine here, if we go help Charlie to check it out."

It wasn't a question. I could see that he was thinking that spending the next week investigating medieval deaths was going to be a lot more interesting than spending it cleaning this place from top to bottom, a prospect I'd foolishly inserted in his head on the drive into town.

Bobby looked narrowly from him to me and Lauren, plainly wondering what the catch was. I'd always thought men stick together, but it didn't seem like it in this instance.

"Good, okay," Dean said when no one made an immediate protest. He stood up. "I'll get the gear."

Charlie and Sam looked at each other and hurried to get to their feet and follow him, Sam turning around at the curving staircase.

"About four-five days, I'll check in," he said, raising his voice to be heard over the clanking footsteps going up the stairs ahead of him. Lauren nodded and waved.

Bobby waited until the door had closed behind the three of them then looked at us. "So, you want to start at the top or at the bottom?"

Lauren and I looked at each other. "At the bottom," we said in near-unison.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Now, I don't know what kind of fun the brothers were having in Michigan, where Charlie's LARPing community was, despite both Dean and Sam calling in every day to reassure us that they were both still alive, because I was so tired by the time they called each evening that all I could manage was to make some kind of grunted responses to any questions asked. Sam asked Lauren to see if the bunker had any lore of faeries, and you should have seen her face. That she didn't burst out in hysterical laughter was a testament to her strength of character, I thought, hearing Bobby's weak chuckle.

The bunker had lore on everything. Absolutely…_everything_.

The morning they left, we took the stairs all the way to the bottom, a matter of five levels down into the bedrock. That's where the generators, boilers, furnace and all manner of utilitarian, keep-you-warm-and-comfy machinery was, all of it running smoothly and loudly and seemingly not needing anything to keep going. Bobby had looked carefully at every single one of the monster generators, muttering the whole time. He'd checked the furnace, which ran on oil, it seemed. He looked over the boilers and checked the pipes. Everything, he told us after we'd ascended a level and could actually hear each other again, was in mint-condition, greased, working fine and in need of no kind of repairs. Lauren and I couldn't understand his mystification. If it's working, surely that's a good thing?

The level above the generators was an interconnected series of warehouse-sized – or airport hangar-sized, if you'd prefer – rooms that were filled side-to-side and top-to-bottom with crates, boxes, barrels, chests, and pretty much every other kind of container-type object you could imagine. It was, very similar to the warehouse at the end of Raiders, to be honest. Same scale. The ceilings weren't as high but these rooms were a lot more tightly packed with stuff, no way you'd get a forklift in between the crates. Looking at it, I actually had the same feeling as I'd had watching that scene, a slightly uneasy sense that there was a lot more to the world than I'd previously thought.

Each of the containers, large and small, had an identification number on it, and after a lot of wandering around and looking in the corners, we found the index for the numbers, a wall-length cupboard of index-card drawers. Every drawer held five hundred cards. There were two thousand drawers in that wall cupboard. And every card related to an item held in the store-rooms. Now, I don't know how good you are at math, but I'll tell you, the idea of one million things stored down here, all relating to something supernatural, was a very, very sobering thought.

Every card detailed the item and we must have spent a couple of hours down there, just reading through with a growing disbelief and incredulity over the objects the order had been collecting over the past however many years since they'd been formed. Bobby had gone straight for items he'd heard of or had read about. Lauren did that as well. I, having less intimate knowledge of sacred, mythological and/or legendary artefacts just browsed the cards at random. One of the cartons apparently held the Cinamanti Stone, a relic of Buddha, and able to grant wishes. I'd never heard of it before, but it seemed like a useful item to have around. Another held the Book of Thoth. This didn't seem like anything you'd want to read in bed, however. According to the index card, Thoth was the Egyptian god of magic and wisdom and his book held thirteen spells, from talking to animals to understanding the minds of the gods – oh yeah, and it was cursed. Fun stuff, eh?

Bobby heaved a sigh that seemed to mix resignation and indignation and turned away from the card drawers when it became apparent we could spend weeks looking in here and still not get through them all. I shot him a quizzical look and he shook his head.

"Nuthin'," he said, jerking a thumb back at the drawers. "Jus' could'a used a few things a coupla years ago, is all."

I didn't want to ask and we found our way out of the maze of containers and back to the stairs and headed for the next floor up. That one had more of the ancient bits and pieces so essential to legend and mythology, but these were displayed in thick glass cases. Along the outer walls, glass-walled rooms with cupboards full of chemicals and old-fashioned equipment and long metal tables were clean rooms, Lauren said. For the physical examination and dating of the artefacts, she explained when I looked blankly at her. I could see she was dying to get some of the objects out of their cases and into one of those rooms to see if they were, in fact, real, but she turned away and we threaded our way back to the stairs, a weaving and meandering path in between the cases.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I could probably go into detail about every floor and every room we found over the next four days, but I'll try and keep it short. There were seven floors in total. Bobby discovered that by hitting a certain combination of lift buttons in the elevator, three more floors existed only on the elevator side of the building below the generator level. The bottom-most of those held a huge garage, with four cars and three motorbikes from the '20s to the '50s sitting in their slots in sartorial splendour. The level above it had an armoury, weapons workshop and firing range that Bobby had gushed about for nearly two days. The level above that, which seemed to be the same depth as the generator level on the other side, held a computer. Well. We were pretty sure it was a computer, the brain behind the building, so to speak. It was circa 1958, however, and none of us could make much sense of the innards of it. Or even figure out what it was running off since no cables came or went from it.

We found a big safe in the level below the library, along with a veritable chemist's apothecary surrounded by store-rooms of raw ingredients for any kind of spell you could throw a stick at. And spell books, herbal tomes, potion books, you name it, it was all there, behind glass-fronted bookcases and filling old-style timber filing cabinets. I think the store-rooms would've made Hermione Granger happy, to tell you the truth.

We also found a purpose-built dungeon. I kid you not. Lauren wouldn't go in it, but she said that the chains and shackles she could see were all spelled – to hold demons, in or out of their meatsuits, to hold angels, vampires, werewolves, all sorts of supernatural nasties. There was a big cupboard in the main part of the room that when Bobby opened seemed to be a tool cupboard when I glanced at it. A closer look revealed that it was – in a sense. Just that you weren't likely to building anything with those tools. Along one side of the brick and stone walls there were four small cells. Iron and salt and silver bars and lines running around the inside of the walls of them, looking like they'd been melted into place. It was creepy.

Lauren and I left Bobby to keep pottering around and looking for specifics, and we went through the living areas of the bunker with the vast quantity of cleaning products I'd persuaded Dean to buy. The rooms came up easily, mostly it was just years of dust laying over everything, and Bobby immediately claimed one of the offices in the hallway down from the library as his own. He said he thought better on his own. I thought that after so long living by himself he probably did.

The one thing I didn't like about the place was the hotel feel to it. When Bobby said we needed a TV to keep up with the latest news, I went into Hays with him and got some bed and bath linen. Nothing fancy, no monograms or embroidery or anything like that. Just something that made the bedroom and the big ensuite bathroom look like a home, instead of Claridges. It made a difference, I can tell you, to walk into the room late at night and see familiar things, unique things that brought memories, instead of the pompous-assed brocade everything that'd been there.

When they finally got back, on the evening of the fifth day with Charlie still in tow, and Dean went upstairs to have a shower and change, he agreed.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"You want a coffee?" I asked, looking at Charlie's lycra-encased backside as she fiddled around the inside of the big computer casing.

"Black, keep it coming," she said, her voice thickened and muffled by the…whatever it was inside the computer with her.

Turning for the elevator, I wondered if she'd be able to figure a way to connect what was basically a hole-punching card interface to her laptop. She seemed confident.

I'd shown Dean the garage and the armoury and the range and the workshops. You'd think he'd died and gone to Heaven from the smile that remained plastered to his face for two days straight. The garage had a few things I hadn't really noticed, like a fully-equipped car workshop, complete with pit and spares for every car that had been kept there. He could do everything he'd ever want to the Impala, from fixing punctures himself to lifting out the engine, panel-beating, respraying even…there was a place for all that stuff. It was incredible to see how those things, as small as they were in the greater scheme of things, made him almost deliriously happy.

But, as delighted as he'd been with the toys he could now play with ad infinitum, it was the safe that had been the kicker.

He and Sam had looked it over the day after they got back. It was one of those huge, cast-iron ones, you know the sort that Butch and Sundance had blown up, with a big iron handle at the front and an ostentatious combination lock above it. There was only the combination, no key and it'd taken Dean about forty seconds to crack it. Inside there were a dozen metal cases and we'd pulled them out and opened them, none of us speaking as we went through what they contained.

Title deeds. Stock and share certificates. Bond certificates. All blue chip. All sitting there and increasing in value for fifty-five years. Boxes of cash. Boxes of gemstones, some uncut, some cut and polished. Thousands of them. Dean's eyes got as big as saucers, Sam started sniggering and couldn't stop.

Living expenses were no longer an issue.

I think Sam wanted to run out and refit the bunker's communications and computer equipment right then and there, but Charlie persuaded him to wait until she had the old mainframe running and they could see what would be needed to bring the whole place into the twenty-first century. She managed it too, drinking black coffee like it was water and running on a mix of excitement, professional interest and adrenalin for a day and a half. She and Sam went to Wichita, coming back with a small truck loaded with state-of-the-art computer equipment and every peripheral device you could possibly imagine and spent a good three days crawling around on the floor connecting it all up and disassembling the older stuff. The first room, which Sam had named the ops room, had twelve computers - sorry, servers - sitting around the walls, monitors, printers, hard disk drives, wireless routers and whatever else it was they'd installed, all humming quietly to themselves and programmed with a number of auto-bots, running searches on every news service in the world. Impressive, eh?

It was the following evening, when we sitting around the ornate dining table and enjoying a well-earned rest, that Bobby dropped his bombshell.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

**AN:** _My apologies for the vast quantity of exposition in this chapter...not something I really wanted to lay on y'all, but I thought it was better to get all the details about the bunker out of the way in one hit so we were all on the same page! My thoughts about the bunker's contents are not entirely original, having been inspired by another's imagination but I think it's a more realistic idea of the 'greatest supernatural repository of knowledge' than we saw in the show and a far more useful ongoing resource for the Winchesters. Next chapter drags us willy-nilly back into the real story!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

The silence around the table was thick enough to cut with a fork – and yes, I do mean fork.

"You want to what?!" Dean asked, a fine spray of mashed potato shooting out with the question.

"Bobby…this is the mother lode," Sam added, looking intently at the old man sitting at the head of the table. "This place has all the answers."

Bobby continued eating, nodding in agreement as he loaded his next mouthful. "Yeah, mebbe," he said, the fork pausing on the way to his mouth. "But the Levis are long gone and I got things I need to do at home."

If you hadn't guessed, which you probably hadn't, Bobby had said he was heading back to Sioux Falls and his house the next day. His arguments were cogent and compelling – it was his home, he had his own setup there that he was used to, he earned a sometimes-living from his yard and every hunter on the continent knew where to find him, and could rely on him for backup if he was there. He thought the bunker was awesome and cool but it wasn't what he wanted.

I think from Dean's view, it was a shock because he'd assumed that Bobby would stay just because of the library and the knowledge base here. Sam too, for that matter. Privately, I thought that Sioux Falls had another reason for the old man to go back to but I decided that was probably something Bobby didn't want debated around the table.

Apparently, Lauren thought the same thing and she didn't have my sensitivity. "This wouldn't have anything to do with a certain sheriff who's been lately seen doing your housekeeping, Bobby?" she asked, smiling.

I've never seen peas and carrots passed through the nasal cavities and to tell you the truth, I can't say that I'd like to see it again, at any time in the future. Bobby coughed and hacked and sputtered for several minutes, snorting violently into his serviette as he tried to unblock his airways, then glowered at Lauren.

"That's none of your beeswax," he growled at her. "But yeah, if you must know," he cleared his throat and looked down at the mess on his plate. "I – uh – well, it's nice to have someone around."

He looked up, around the table. "Been a while, you don't think I deserve it?"

I swear he was blushing under the shadow of that cap, but defiant too, and both Dean and Sam hurried to reassure him.

"No, no, it's all –"

"Of course you deserve it, Bobby –"

"We think you're –"

"Bobby, I'm sorry we haven't been –"

They babbled over the top of one another and Bobby shook his head crossly. "Shut it."

Charlie was looking around at them with the air of someone who'd fallen down the rabbit-hole. I don't think she'd realised the closeness between the brothers and the old hunter.

"Doesn't matter anyway," she piped in, and we all looked at her. "Judging by the file capacity alone, that 'puter has every file in here digitalised and on the drives. I've set up a remote access server and every firewall and black ice protection I could think of, and if you've got the rights, you can log into it from anywhere in the world."

It took a couple of minutes for that to sink into the brains of those of us who were non-technical, but Sam's face lit up with a delighted grin and so did Lauren's.

"Don't get too excited," she continued, pushing her empty plate to one side. "The books, the rest of it…it looks like they might have started to transcribe them into the database but I'm guessing that the technology wasn't there for them and it was too time-consuming –"

"But now, we could," Sam cut her off, leaping ahead. "With OCR and scanning devices, even the three-dimensional laser scans –"

"We could have the whole library and every detail, all searchable –" Lauren interrupted him, looking at Charlie questioningly.

"Yeah, it's possible now," Charlie agreed. "But it's still a helluva time-consuming job, I mean," she paused and waved a hand vaguely around the room. "Just from the little I've seen, you're talking millions of entries."

"Yeah?" Sam frowned at her.

"Well, the biggest databases in the world, which are so unwieldy and have to be re-indexed every day, they're in those numbers," she finished, leaning back in her chair. "You need a pro to set everything up so that things are cross-referenced properly, the database has all the fields you're likely to use, not just now, but in the future, because retrofitting that crap is a nightmare –"

Dean looked at her coolly. "So more effort than it's worth?"

"Well, no, not in the long-term," Charlie said slowly. "Especially if you're talking generations being able to use it, but not a five-minute – or five-year – job."

Bobby sighed and got up, picking up his plate. "The files being there is a start," he said, looking at the pensive faces surrounding the table, one of which, I'm sure was mine. "The ones I've looked at all cite their references, gives a direction anyhow."

"Yeah," Sam agreed glumly. I could see that he'd been almost as delirious with the idea of the Men of Letters super-database as Dean had been with the garage workshop.

I looked at Charlie. "Is that something you can set up, the database design and the templates?" I asked. "I mean, if was properly designed and set up, then maybe we could gradually go through the library and collections and put the information in?"

Charlie looked back at me in horror. "Me? Hell, no!" she exclaimed, modifying her volume as she added, "I mean, yeah, I could probably do it but –"

"But what?" Lauren asked, leaning on the table.

"It's a – uh – a time-consuming job, and I still have to earn a living, pay my bills," she prevaricated, looking away.

"We could pay you," Sam said certainly. "Give us a time-line, the specs you need – Charlie, this isn't a place we can just let anyone into."

She chewed on her lip as she turned the idea over in her head. "I'll think about it," she allowed finally. "I got – I've got some stuff I need to take care of, but I'll think about it."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Dean drove Bobby and Charlie back to their respective vehicles the following morning and Sam and Lauren seemed to have planned to spend the day in isolation, not that I was speculating at all on what that might mean, but I was careful to keep out of the wing for the day.

After making breakfast, and cleaning up, I wandered aimlessly for a while. I looked at the classifications in the library, haphazardly familiarising myself with their locations, as I had a feeling that search and find missions through these stacks was going to be one of my duties from now on. I could have gone looking for more about anything we were chasing, to tell you the truth, but I wasn't feeling all that motivated and eventually, armed with a duster and a few cleaning rags and a half-bucket of warm, soapy water, I pushed open the door of the first office in the hallway off the library with the vague idea that if I couldn't do anything useful in the research area, I might as well clean.

I was halfway through the stuffed shelves that sat to either side of the hearth when I focussed on the titles of the books under the damp rag, wiping away the dusty and tilting my head sideways to read them.

"Men of Letters, The Order History," I read softly to myself. The next volume, equally dusty, was revealed to have the title 'Men of Letters, The Teaching and Training of the Apprentice, Volume One.'

As much practise as I'd had in the last few months, of digging through books and files and old footnotes for obscure, archaic information, I hadn't ever thought of myself as the scholarly type, but the second I read that second title, I was intrigued. Maybe intrigued is the wrong word. It was stronger than that, it was, I thought, a little bit uneasily, the same compulsion I'd felt when I'd been back in my own world, and trying to find out about the power of souls and Purgatory and all the things that couldn't possibly help but that I couldn't seem to let go of.

I hurriedly cleaned the rest. The training of an apprentice apparently took ten volumes. The training of an initiate took twenty. Each of these books was about four inches across the spine and weighed in at around four and a half pounds. It was going to take months and months to get through them, just reading for interest.

The sly little thought stopped me as I lifted my hand toward the first book. Wasn't I just reading for interest? I asked myself doubtfully. There were no Legacies here, so I couldn't possibly be thinking of reading for anything else. Could I?

My hand was hovering above the spine of the Order's history book and I took step backward, turning and sitting down in the plump and overstuffed wing-back chair. It would be useful to know about the Order, I told myself firmly. _Lauren would be all over it_, an argumentative voice returned sharply. It was mine, that voice, but it was the one that argued against pretty much everything. Spending out of budget. Working to all hours. Reading material that couldn't possibly be useful. Falling in love with the wrong man. I was pretty fed up with that voice, actually, which I had a sneaking suspicion was actually my aunt's voice, pointing out the pitfalls of everything non-normal I wanted to do. You should've heard it when I decided to get married.

I could be useful here. That thought almost tip-toed around into my head and I leaned back and sighed. I didn't want to be a tag-along. I certainly didn't want my only purpose in life to be Dean's girlfriend, as ridiculous as that sounds on the surface. I wanted to help –

_You won't be helping, you'll be make-working_, came the expected snarky comment. Don't get me wrong, my aunt was okay. A little narrow-minded maybe, but not nearly as mean as she sounded in my head. Her comments had always been well-meaning, and if they'd sometimes made me doubt what I could or couldn't do, it hadn't been malicious.

Lauren would be on these, I knew, like a bug on stink, but would it be so bad if we both knew about the order? At least as much as we could find out here? I could do it part-time, in between doing whatever else was asked.

I bet you're thinking, wow, what happened to her? What happened to the get-up-and-go? What happened to the woman who nearly gagged swallowing dream root to try and help Sam? Or managed to survive a stint in Hell? Well, I'll tell you, it was a combination of things. Crowley's ministrations were still pretty fresh in my memories and despite having talked about it to probably the only person who could really understand, there were still echoes bouncing around in my head. Then there was the fact that I was nearly out of outlines, and I couldn't work out how to find Kevin – or Crowley for that matter – because even when I'd been back home and present at all the meetings, the writers had never bothered with any of the details of how things had happened, they'd just written down that it'd happened and that was that. And then there the fear, just lurking around in the background, that I was different from other people here. I don't think Dean thought I wasn't human or anything like that, but where I came from, things were different on fundamental levels that I couldn't even guess at here.

Cas said that changing the way things were supposed to play out was a good thing, I reminded myself. Or at least, a mostly good thing, I amended. And the truth was, I could sit here and drive myself nuts with the on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand conversation I was having with myself and it wouldn't do anyone any good.

I got up and grabbed the first book, pulling it down and dropping back into the armchair. Like the other books, Lauren had found, this one had been published by their company, the Aquarian Star stamped on the publication information page. I flipped past to the contents page and then the foreword, and let the world disappear as I concentrated on the words.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It was about seven hours later when I felt the ker-thunka-thunka of the front door's locking mechanism vibrating through my feet and I looked up from the book. The unvarying light from the sconces and lamps in the office meant that I'd had no clue of how long I'd been reading, and I will say that the writing was interesting – heck, the history was interesting.

I straightened out painfully, putting the book pages-down over the arm of the chair and looked around, a little light-headedly since I hadn't eaten anything more than a couple of slices of toast hours ago. I stood up warily, leaning on one arm of the chair as my legs prickled and itched with pins and needles. Half the books were still coated in dust and my bucket was full of cold, grimy water. Picking it up, I walked out of the office and back to the kitchen as Dean came through the dining room door.

"Hey," he said, dumping a paper bag of groceries on the island counter as I poured out the gross water down the deep sink. "What's for dinner?"

I looked at my watch, feeling a bit guilty about spending the entire day doing nothing but reading. "Uh, um…haven't decided yet," I said, looking past him to the fridges. "What did you get?"

"Beer," he said, pulling out a couple of six-packs and going to the fridge to put them in. "Ground beef, onions, cheese, rolls –"

I shook my head. "So, uh, you'd like burgers?"

"Oh, well," he said, unpacking the load and shrugging. "If you feel like it too."

The silence in the place must have registered on him because he looked around. "Where's Sam and Lauren?"

"They haven't been up –" I started to say, then realised that I had no idea what they'd been doing. "Uh, well…"

He grinned at me, filling in the blanks on his own. "Sounds like something we could try, tomorrow?"

I could see he was enjoying the opportunity to leer suggestively and I tried to focus on making the burgers instead.

"Did Charlie say if she was coming back?" I asked, grabbing a skillet from under the counter.

There was a momentary pause and I looked up. He shrugged and shook his head.

"No, she said she'd call when she was ready," he said, pulling the rolls out of their packaging.

I may not be any good at fighting hand-to-hand, or killing monsters or programming computers, but I can usually get a good idea of what's going on in people's heads, a combo of body language and instinct, I think, and Dean was a bad liar to anyone he cared about anyway.

"What's going on?" I asked, trying to keep my tone ultra-light.

"Nothing," he said, turning away and retrieving the two cold beers from the fridge. He opened both, not looking at me and set one close enough for me to reach.

I made the patties and heated a little olive oil in the skillet, putting the meat in more-or-less on automatic pilot as I calculated distances and time. Dropping Charlie off in Lebanon and Bobby in Benoit should have been an even one-hour round trip. Dean had taken seven.

I cooked the burgers, waiting for him to say something else. He didn't, just buttered the rolls and sliced tomato and opened the pre-sliced cheese pack. The kitchen was filled with noise, the spattering of the cooking meat, but the silence deepened.

"Uh, Charlie asked me to help her move some stuff," Dean finally said, when it got too much. "She's…um…living in Topeka now."

"Uh huh." I slid the spatula under the patties and deposited them on the rolls.

He put the toppings on and squirted ketchup over them. "Smells good."

"Hmmm," I said, turning the burner off, putting the hot pan in the sink and wiping down the stove-top.

"We could –"

I walked past him and out of the kitchen, no longer hungry, no longer interested in a conversation that was so filled with holes.

"Terry –" Dean came out behind him, his stride overtaking mine easily since I was determined not to actually run. He stopped my forward progress by the simple expedient of getting ahead of me and stopping dead. "Just – look, wait, okay? Can you wait a goddamned second before you –"

I waited. Looking at the floor. He let out a huge exhale.

"Her mom's in care there," he said, his voice low. "She's, uh, well, she's not conscious and she hasn't been for fifteen years, and Charlie's paying the bills anonymously and trying to spend time with her."

It was surprising news, because of all the things I'd conjured to myself about Charlie's mysterious past, a sick mother hadn't been on the list.

"She just wanted someone to help move to an apartment that's closer to the hospital, and I – uh – I guess she wanted someone to talk to," he said. All trace of his earlier hedging was gone from his voice, and I couldn't work out why he couldn't have just said that when he'd arrived.

"Why didn't you say that?"

"She asked me not to tell anyone else," he said, hands spreading out defensively.

I shook my head at him, reminding myself that the man had hardly any experience in relationship pitfalls, no matter how much experience he had with women in other areas.

"You didn't have to tell me her secret, you idiot," I said, looking up at him finally, turning around and heading back to the kitchen. I heard the clump of his boots on the carpet behind me. "You could've said everything you just did except for that."

"Uh –"

"You need me to do the math for you, Dean?" I snapped as I went to the counter and picked up my burger. "Charlie thinks you're hot stuff. You take seven hours to do a one-hour errand with her. You get back and you say nothing about the length of time you're gone and you lie to me when I ask." I took a big savage bite out of the burger.

I wasn't really mad at him, I was overreacting to the relief I was feeling. Charlie'd been fishing around while she'd been here and I'd been playing waitress to her coffee demands, asking about the brothers, about Lauren and about Dean. It didn't take a genius to see that she was intrigued. Again, wrong word. Interested. I'd told her the situation. I'd thought that was the end of it.

"You don't trust me?" he asked, just a slight edge to his voice.

Putting my burger down as my appetite fled, I chewed and swallowed that ill-thought-out bite as quickly as I could. In some ways I trusted him more than any other person on this earth. But Daniel had put a crimp in my trust in this specific area a long time ago.

I saw his expression change as he remembered that too.

"Sonofabitch," he muttered, turning away from me. "That asshole does the crime, and I have to do the time?"

Put like that, it sounded unfair. It probably was unfair. The thing was, it wasn't really the first time. There'd been very little opportunities to have anything even remotely resembling any kind of social life for us, mostly we were moving, reading, running or shooting, you know, stuff along those lines. The few times we'd been out – in the so-called normal world together – well, he attracted a certain amount of admiring female attention, unsurprisingly. He hadn't paid any mind to it at all, half the time I thought he hadn't even noticed, but…I had. Noticed, I mean.

And the other thing was that he hadn't said anything. Not to me. Maybe he'd told Sam how he felt. He was solicitous, he noticed all the little things, something that had surprised me more the longer we'd spent together, he noticed everything and he went out of his way to make sure that he did whatever he could when he noticed – like at Ganem's house. But he hadn't – or he couldn't – say it. Say what he felt. Say it to me.

Sometimes, I'd thought he'd wanted to…sometimes he looked like he was on the verge of saying something. Never did, though.

I'm not a shrinking violet, I don't need everything spelled out, and like I said, in any other area but this one, I trusted him. Old habits die hard and old wounds take time to mend, even if it's more pride than heart that was broken.

I couldn't apologise for the way I felt. I couldn't say anything.

Maybe he figured that out too. He turned back, walking around the counter, and leaning close. "That's not on the cards, Terry, never has been, never will be," he said forcefully, his eyes lit up to a bright green with determination. "That's not me, and you _know_ me."

I get why some people give up on relationships, even if they love the person, even if it doesn't solve anything. Sometimes it's just hard, really hard. I _did_ know him. I knew more than I probably should've. I couldn't say to him what I needed, what I was waiting for, because hey, if you have to tell them, it's not right, is it? Leading the witness and all that good lawyer crap.

So, even though I knew, right down to the marrow of my bones, that this relationship was not going to be Easy Street by any means and that conversations like this were a part and parcel of it, a part of me was standing there wishing I had just let it go and not even raised it. It took me a little while to realise that that part was wishing I didn't love him quite this much.

"Terry, c'mon…" he said, and he was searching my face, trying to guess what was going through my head, trying to figure out what he could say, I guess, to get us out of this moment which seemed to be lasting forever.

I looked away and nodded, sucking in a deep breath at the same time. That was obviously not what he'd wanted to see and he knew me well enough to guess that I was on brink of giving up and just agreeing.

"No," he said, his hand rising fast to catch my jaw and turn me back to meet his eyes. "No, no way, not this time. Tell me what the hell is going on."

"I'm trying," I finally said, not really knowing what else to say. It was news to me that he'd recognised that I'd done this before, letting go of something that I thought would push us into an area that we weren't ready to deal with – that I wasn't ready to deal with.

"Just tell me the truth," he said, and I swallowed a nervous bubble of laughter.

The truth? The truth that I loved him with every particle of being I had, but I didn't know how he felt about me? I knew he cared, but that's not the same thing, that's not enough. I knew it wasn't going to do me any good to force anything out of him because I needed it come without forcing, needed it to be real.

"I don't know how to let it go," I blurted out, not quite a lie, but definitely not the truth he was asking for. "It's not you, it's not who you are or what you do, Dean," I continued, trying to get somewhere near a truth, if not the truth. "It's like…being afraid of water, even after you learn how to swim, or…uh –"

"Do you trust me?" he asked, cutting off my hopeless analogies.

"I know you care," I said, more carefully. "I trust that."

And you know, for a second I got that feeling again, that feeling that he wanted to say something else. It vanished and I felt my heart sink a little. He straightened up, and picked up his burger, his shoulders slightly hunched up. I didn't need to be told that he was giving up, at least on this conversation.

"That'll have to do then."

We finished our burgers in silence. They were close to cold, not nearly as good as they were hot but they were food.

I don't understand, really, why it's so difficult to just say what's wrong. Well, that's not true either. I do, for some of it. If I had told Dean that I don't trust him one hundred percent because he's never told me how he feels, that puts a pressure on him to say something. And because of that pressure, what he says might be either not one hundred percent true, or worse, it might force him to tell me the truth, that he doesn't feel the same way. How does that help?

I turned from the counter and put my plate in the sink, letting it clatter a bit. The truth, as admirable as it was, was not the be-all and end-all in a relationship. What I did know was that I couldn't help my feelings of not-quite-knowing if he was going to do something that was going to hurt, and he couldn't help not being able to say the thing that would have made those feelings easier to deal with. Lose-lose.

The sad thing was that we both knew that this mess hadn't been resolved and neither of us could move past it until it was, but neither of us knew what to try next to find a resolution we could both accept. I was achingly tired but I didn't want to lie next to him and feel all those tangled up feelings fill up the space in between us.

"I'm going to read for a bit," I said, apropos of nothing, heading for the hall. This time, he didn't stop me or ask anything else, just nodded and turned left for the stairs when I turned right for the office. I heard his feet go up the steps and I opened the office door and pulled it closed behind me, sitting down in the armchair and picking up the order's history and forcing myself to focus on the words until the reading came on its own.

You might be thinking…wow, what a storm in a tea-cup…and I think too that you'd be right. But I was slowly learning that when you're in love, there are a lot of buried mines on the playing field and even not lying to each other doesn't disarm all of them. It was something I'd never even considered in my previous relationships…but then I know now that I hadn't been in love in any of those.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

When I woke up the following morning, the building was silent. I was still in the armchair, my neck cricked and aching from being bent the wrong way most of the night, the book lying on my lap. I looked at my watch and groaned a little as I saw the time. Past nine. Then it occurred to me that no one – and by that I meant Dean – had come looking for me.

Feeling sorry for yourself is not a recommended way to start the day.

I got up and try to de-crick myself, gingerly stretching out and deciding that a very hot, very strong shower would do more at this point than anything else. I'd read a lot before I'd fallen asleep, and between the history skirling around in my head, and my discomfort, and the pressing question of why no one had even looked to see where I was, I figured that the shower would blow away the unimportant stuff.

The hall was empty, of course, but I thought that maybe they were elsewhere in the big building. The internal walls were all thick, and there'd been a few times I'd been convinced I'd been alone when Bobby and Lauren had just been doing something on another floor, oblivious to my calling out.

I got up to our bedroom and saw that the bed was neatly made, no clothing left o the floor. In the bathroom, towels were hanging up, the vanity was clean and although Dean's toothbrush was still there, in the glass under the mirror, it didn't look the way it looked when he got up usually. I shoved all those little uneasy thoughts aside and had a shower, nearly scalding myself but emerging clean, with far less stiffness and feeling more like I could face the day.

Walking downstairs, I went to the kitchen. It was clean and tidy, the coffee pot rinsed out and empty, all the usual detritus from the brothers having breakfast gone, counters clean, dishes and pans put away.

That was…more unsettling, I thought, trying to pretend I'd seen it like this before. I hadn't, actually. Usually, we were all early risers, reasonably early anyway, but the whole breakfast and clearing up took a while. Filling the coffee machine, I wondered if they'd found a case or something and had just left to take it on. I couldn't work out if Dean was pissed about the previous night, or if he'd been disappointed, or what exactly he'd been feeling.

I looked around the empty, clean room and decided that he must have been pissed to not even wake me and say bye.

The pot burbled and carried on and I absently extracted bread from the pack and stuck in the toaster. I was a big girl, and if they'd gone off somewhere on a case I could certainly manage to keep myself busy until they got back.

It was a weird feeling. Sort of like coming home and finding a note saying everyone had gone to a party, you were invited too, but no indication of where the darned party was.

"There you are."

I jumped into the air at Lauren's voice from the doorway, spinning around and fanning my chest as I stared accusingly at her.

"Thought you were gone," I got out once my lungs figured out what they were for again.

She shook her head, smiling a little. "No, Sam got a call from Kevin, and they've gone to find him."

"From Kevin?" I repeated, a little dumbly.

"The prophet," she reminded me. I made a face and nodded.

"I know who he is – did he escape?"

"Apparently, from both the angels and from Crowley," she said. My toast popped out of the toaster and fell on the counter and I grabbed it and started buttering.

"Crowley? Crowley got him?"

"Killed the angels who were guarding him and had him in some kind of factory," she confirmed.

That was a worry, I thought.

"Now, are you going to tell me what's been going on or do we have to play Twenty Questions again?" she asked, getting a cup and filling it from the nearly full pot and sitting down at the big table.

"What do you mean?" I hedged, trying to buy time to make something up if need be.

"Well, let's see," she said comfortably, leaning back in her chair. "First you and Dean are acting extremely oddly in Sheridan, then you seemed a bit better in Benoit, and you seemed a bit blue when we got here, then this morning, Dean's looking like a thundercloud and is stomping around like someone poured acid all over the Impala...?"

"Uh, well," I said, pouring a coffee and taking toast and cup to the table. "Just a misunderstanding."

"Hmmm."

I like Lauren, I really do. Under the daily shock of how gorgeous she really is, she's a very warm person who is also very intelligent and yet has managed to retain common-sense in a world where that's pretty darned rare these days. I didn't hold back my personal crap because I didn't trust her…basically I really didn't tell anyone my personal crap and had lived that way for too many years to change easily now. But I thought that maybe, just maybe she might be able to figure out something that I couldn't.

"I ran out of the contraceptive pill sometime after we got the Levi tablet," I said, looking down at my toast. "I didn't remember it until we were back at the cabin, after that pureblood werewolf thing, and at Sheridan…well, I turned out not to be."

She nodded, keeping track of my less-than-forthcoming-details quite easily. "That was a disappointment?" she asked gently and I looked up at her, surprised she'd caught onto that.

"No, not really," I said, frowning a bit. "But yeah, I think – well, you know, you think about it, trying to, uh, sort of prepare –"

"I know," she said. "When it turns out not to be, there's a feeling of loss. Of, um, missing out."

I nodded. "You too?"

"Once upon a time," she agreed lightly, clearly not ready to be diverted onto her own story at this point. "Did Dean feel the same way?"

"I don't know…maybe," I said, thinking about that awkward conversation in the dark.

"He's not ready to admit how much he wants a family," she said, her lips curving up in a small smile.

I looked at her quizzically. "How do you know he wants a family?"

"It's all he's ever really wanted," she told me, picking up her cup and sipping her coffee. "Down deep."

"He can't quit this."

"No," she agreed. "And he shouldn't. But it never had to be one thing or the other, with no middle ground."

"That didn't work out with Lisa and Ben," I pointed out, somewhat sharply. "In fact it failed pretty badly."

She looked at me. "He was on the road with Sam then, and he didn't love her, you know that. He wasn't prepared to make it work, he didn't tell her how it really was."

I opened my mouth to tell her it was the same situation and closed it again, picking up my now-cold toast and crunching my way through it.

"Terry, he would give up everything if you asked him to," she said in a quiet voice, almost drowned out by my masticating. "The hunting, the life, his friends, even Sam, I think."

I shook my head unwisely and toast crumbs flew across the table. "No, he wouldn't."

She shrugged. "I think you're going to find you're wrong about that," she said. "He loves you."

Swallowing the suddenly dry toast, I stared at her. "How do you know that?"

"He talks to Sam," she said with a little wave of her hand. "Sam talks to me."

Really, I thought crossly. "He hasn't said anything to me about it."

She snorted and I scowled at her. Nothing she was saying was believable, was credible in light of what I knew about Dean. He didn't like a lot about the life he and Sam were living, but he wouldn't give it up, couldn't give it up because it was who he was, right down deep inside. And there was no way he'd be happy to ditch Sam and go off somewhere else.

"Look, you know Dean," she said reasonably, obviously seeing my expression darkening. "He has an issue with sharing the hard stuff, right?"

"Hmmm," I hummed noncommittally at her and picked up my second piece of toast. It was like chewing butter-covered rock but I figured it was good for my teeth. Or my jaw muscles. Or something.

"What happened last night?"

I thought about that. "He helped Charlie with moving her stuff and got back late," I said, picking and choosing my words.

"And you thought…ah, so that wasn't resolved?" she asked, having made all the necessary leaps herself. I envied Sam his relationship with someone who just figured stuff out so easily.

"Not really," I admitted, brushing the crumbs off my shirt and the table. "I mean, that part of it sort of was, but you – well, you know why it's an issue for me, and he does too. He thinks that I'm never going to trust him on that, even though it wasn't him who screwed up."

"Is he right?"

I looked away with a grimace. "No, I don't think so, but he hasn't said how he feels so it's shaky ground for me right there, isn't it?"

"Come on, you know that's not in him." She looked hard at me. "He'd cut his arm off before he cheated."

"Yeah," I agreed softly. "I know."

"So this is your problem and you have to deal with it, before it wrecks what you have," she pressed me and I should have seen that coming, I really should.

"Don't sugar-coat it for me, will you," I groused at her.

"Don't make me tell you what an idiot you're being for fearing something that wouldn't happen," she countered sharply.

I sighed. She was right.

"We talked about this, Terry. The more it means, the harder it is, but it's worth every moment," she added, a bit more kindly.

I couldn't disagree. It's a peculiar thing but I didn't think I'd ever felt as alive as I did now, all that emotional confusion aside, it still felt as if I was actually living my life not just marking time with people and events and things that didn't mean that much.

She finished her coffee and got up. "Kevin's in Omaha," she said, taking her cup to the sink. "They'll be back tonight."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

We spent the day cleaning the apothecary and skim-reading through some of the spell books. I probably can't say it enough, but the place was unbelievable…there were actually spells to counteract vampirism, possibly even based on Samuel Campbell's passed-down one, and to stop djinn poison, to help werewolves control themselves over the course of the moon's waxing and waning…everything you could think of, it was here. And a lot we couldn't think of, I thought, reading a ritual for summoning a gryffin. I mean, really, what possible use would you have for a gryffin?

The labelled bottles were even more bizarre. Some of them I was passingly familiar with from hearing about the various types of Asian medicine, usually in conjunction with saving a species of animal being hunted to extinction over their use, others were essences of plants and powdered forms of elements and minerals, still others were more likely to be found in any of the better class of fantasy fiction novels, dragon's tears and demon teeth, eye of newt and toe of frog, you know the kind of thing I'm talking about. The equipment the room had was pretty interesting as well, I thought, looking into a drawer full of metal and glass hypodermic syringes with boxes of every sized needle lying beside them. One of them looked like it might be something you gave shots to elephants with and I shuddered delicately at the thought of the needle it used. I'm not so great with needles, although I don't actually faint or run screaming at the sight of them.

"There are a lot of these potions made up for use," Lauren said, standing beside a cupboard full of clear glass bottles and jars, each filled with different coloured liquids, creams and powders.

I looked over and made a face. "You think they have use-by dates?"

"Mostly, no," she answered with a straight face. "But I'll go through them and check on that with the original recipe. It would be a help to Dean and Sam if they could carry the most needed with them."

I nodded. It would, undoubtedly. The longer we looked through the bunker and its contents, the more apparent it was becoming that this place, with its knowledge and the objects and ingredients collected and stored, was going to make a difference in every hunt they took on. And to every other hunter they and Bobby were in contact with.

"We are going to have to get Bobby to let the other hunters know about this," Lauren said as if she'd read my thoughts. Great minds think alike, I decided. She hardly needed to add telepathy to her list of virtues.

"Maybe we could run a convention?" I suggested, only half-joking. So many of the hunters the writers on the show had seen had been killed, but Bobby seemed to know more, and even Dean and Sam talked about their father's friends, from time to time.

In the history I'd been reading, the order's Legacies had worked with hunting families. The Campbells had been mentioned, more than a hundred years ago. I wondered if it would be possible to trace more of the brothers' relatives through those files.

"We're going to have to find out more about the Legacies in Boston as well," Lauren said, breaking that train of thought. "I can't believe they didn't follow up on the people here."

"Neither can I," I agreed slowly. It was weird. Dominic had said that three Legacies had been working here, but two Initiates had been taking their final test or whatever it was the night Abaddon had attacked – and not here, at the bunker, but in Benoit, at what seemed to have been a day club. Henry Winchester had been one of them.

"Do you think they'll let Dean and Sam take over this place, just because of their grandfather?" I asked her. She closed the cabinet doors and turned back to me.

"I don't know. Wickfield seemed certain that they were supposed to be Legacies," she said uncertainly. "The key wouldn't have let them in if they hadn't been." She took a couple of steps closer. "Why? What's the matter?"

"Nothing," I said, more certainly to reassure myself. "It's just…I – I was reading the order's history, last night."

Lauren nodded, as if she'd been expecting that. "So that's why Dean was all bent out of shape this morning."

I shook my head. It probably was but that was the beside the point. "In the history, the…um, groups, the cells, whatever you want to call them, they were tight," I explained. "They helped each other out, they all had the early warning system," I continued, thinking of the big glass-topped table in the first big room. "In case of attack, they would come, straight away."

"And they didn't this time?" Lauren looked pensively around the room. "I wondered about that too," she admitted. "When the Legacies came to speak to my parents, my father, mostly, there were always three of them, two Legacies, from different branches, and an Initiate or Apprentice." She looked at her hands, clasped in front of her. "I asked one of them why, he said that the order's knowledge had to be shared and every Legacy or trainee needed to have first-hand experience in talking to the creatures of the other dimensions. The ones I remember, they weren't like Wickfield. More like Larry, really."

I knew we were both wondering if politics had changed things within the order. It seemed to manage to spoil most things that had been working well, after a certain period of time.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The front door locks clunked one by one and Lauren and I looked up from the books we were reading in the library as the door at the top of the stairs opened. Sam came in first, followed by a young Asian man who was carrying a canvas bag clutched tight to his chest. Dean came in behind them. All three looked exhausted, bruises and cuts and scrapes mottling their faces, Sam holding his arm as he walked down the stairs and Dean leaning a little to one side, trying to keep his shoulder still, I thought, recognising that stillness from personal experience.

"What happened?" Lauren strode down the shallow steps dividing the library from the big room fast, going straight to Sam. I followed her a little more slowly, looking from the young man's wide-eyed astonishment to the man walking behind him.

"Are you alright?" I asked Dean, and he nodded, although the tilted way he was holding himself said otherwise.

"Uh, Kevin, this is Terry," Sam said as we stopped somewhat awkwardly in a group at the bottom of the stairs. I wondered why he was singling me out then remembered that Lauren had already met the prophet. "Terry, Kevin Tran."

"There's dinner, uh, if you're hungry?" I said, in lieu of anything more appropriate to a prophet who'd been kidnapped by angels, left in the desert and then apparently found by the King of Hell.

"Starving," Dean said, turning for the library immediately. Everyone else followed at a slower and less hop-a-long kind of pace, and I looked at Sam.

"What happened to Dean?"

"Crowley's demons found Kevin at the same time we did," he said, wincing a little as he moved his arm. "All in brawl for possession. Dean's shoulder was dislocated."

Obviously, he'd put it back but I could understand the lop-sided look now. "What about you?"

"Just a scratch, I'll put some stitches in it when we've eaten," he said, glancing at Lauren.

"I'll put some stitches while you eat," she corrected him, peeling off at the doorway to go downstairs to the apothecary.

Dishing out the food and carrying them to the big pine table in the kitchen, I wondered if Dean was going to give me the chance to talk to him. He ate solidly, using just his left arm for everything and not looking at anyone.

"How did Crowley find you?" I asked Kevin, sitting down with my plate.

Lauren came in and set her medical kit on the counter behind the table, perhaps deciding to eat first and doctor later.

"I don't know," he said with a shrug. "He had a gun that killed the angels, the next thing I knew I was in this factory somewhere else and he had another tablet."

"Another tablet?" Dean asked through a mouthful of food.

"What was it called?" Sam asked before Kevin could answer.

"Demon."

"So he did have the Demon tablet," Dean said, looking at his brother. "Were there any others?"

"Others?" Kevin frowned. "Are there others?"

"One, we think," Lauren told him. "Angel."

"Oh, great," Kevin snapped, looking at his plate as if his appetite had just left without a word. "That's just great!"

"What'd the tablet have on it?" Dean asked, presumably to cut off a rant.

"Lots of crap about Hell," Kevin said sourly. "A real lot, actually."

"Specifics?"

"Well, I found a section that said there was a way to close the gates," Kevin told him, looking down the table. "Forever."

He looked around the table at Lauren and Sam and I. "That'd be useful, right?"

Dean's fork clattered as it hit the plate, falling from plainly nerveless fingers. "Yeah. That might be useful," he said, looking at Sam.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

When they'd finished eating, Dean took Kevin upstairs to find a bedroom. He came back down five minutes later, his eyes a brilliant green and impatience written all over his face.

"Sonofabitch," he said, dropping into the chair with a noisy exhale.

"Does he mean closing Hell down entirely?" Lauren asked worriedly as she cleaned Sam's arm and picked up a curved needle. "What about the souls of those who've sinned?"

"Who cares?!" Dean crowed, grabbing his beer from the table and swigging a mouthful. "The demons will be locked down there forever."

"And the souls of murderers, dictators, terrorists, torturers and rapists will be restless spirits here, won't that be a laugh!" Lauren pointed out bitingly to him, tying off the first stitch and wiping away a little trickle of blood. "Terry, that jar's for Dean."

I looked at the jar on the table as Dean leaned forward with a dawning, "Huh."

Standing, I picked up the jar and walked around him, dragging a chair closer to his right side and gesturing at him to take off his shirts. For a moment he didn't move, his expression wary as he looked at me. Then he sighed and pulled back the plaid shirt, lifting the bottom of his tee shirt until his arm was out of it and I could see a murky rainbow of bruising over the entire shoulder area and down the bicep. I scooped out a handful of the pale blue cream and slathered it over the darkest bruises first.

"Kevin can give us the details in the morning," Sam hissed, his teeth clenched as Lauren carefully slid the needle through his skin. "Shutting it all down –"

"Locking Crowley away to rot –" Dean interjected, his head tipped back and eyes closed as the cream began to numb the shoulder.

"Closing it up so no demon can escape again," Sam finished, taking in a deep breath as Lauren tied off the last stitch and packed the cut with another kind of cream, this one a rather adorable pale pink. "That's what we're talking about, right?"

"Promised land," Dean agreed. I looked at his face and saw he was watching me with one eye half-slitted. He closed it again. "Halve our workload."

Lauren bound a dressing over the cream and stitches and a bandage around that. "Well, let's make sure we read the fine print before we get all excited about the results," she said, clearing away the mess and getting up.

"Hey, it's the Word of God," Dean protested. "How can you not trust that?"

She sniffed at him. "You didn't read Job's trials, Dean?"

He looked blankly at her, and I hastily repressed a smile. "I liked Stephen King's version," I said, throwing a look over my shoulder at her and grinning when she lifted her brows delicately.

"'_When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'_"

Both Sam and Dean snorted and Lauren turned away with a harrumph sound, taking the wrappings and used gauze to the trash can and throwing it in. "Yeah, funny, but that could be us, you know."

That sobered the brothers up in a hurry. Lauren turned to Sam and said unlovingly, "You look horrible, you need to sleep."

"Thanks," Sam responded with a dry expression, getting up anyway and inclining his head toward us. "See you in the morning."

I nodded as I kept rubbing the salve into Dean's shoulder, working my way down to the less violently coloured streaks on his arm.

"Yeah," Dean said, watching him go out the door.

It's possible we were both listening to Sam's footsteps going down the hall. I know I was. When I couldn't hear them any more, I scooped out another handful and leaned closer to reach the muscles over his chest and behind the collarbone.

"I'm sorry," I said, keeping my eyes on what I was doing.

"About what?" he asked, his voice expressionless. I snuck a look at him to find his face was cold and hard as well. "Not giving me a chance? Or being pissed at me because I'm pissed at being tried and convicted for someone else's crime?"

"Both," I said, feeling my heart give a mad double-beat in my chest. He wasn't hiding the fact that he was still feeling bitter. "For letting old history affect me…and us."

He looked away, but his muscles relaxed fractionally under my fingertips.

"Okay," he said, and this time there was a bit of warmth in his voice. "Where were you last night?"

"In the first office, next to the library," I told him. "I was reading about the order."

"Huh," he said, consideringly. "Didn't think of those."

"You looked for me?" I couldn't help the disbelief in my voice. I thought he'd gone to sleep.

"Spent most of the night looking for you," he told me, with a dry look at my tone. "I went right through this place."

"I'm sorry," I said again, knowing how inadequate it sounded. No wonder he'd been mad in the morning.

He shook his head, dismissing the apology or maybe the need for it, I couldn't tell, and looked at his arm, lifting it and rotating the shoulder tentatively. "What is that stuff?"

I looked at the label. "_Numbing Lotion #2_," I read out. "_Analgesic for topical wounds, bruising, muscle and tissue damage_."

The list of ingredients were in their scientific names and I didn't think he'd want to hear me mangle the pronunciations.

"It's good," he said, with a touch of surprise. "Pain's gone."

Closing up the jar and going to the counter to wash my hands, I found myself wondering about what Lauren had said earlier. He wasn't exactly giving off the vibes. Not, I considered, drying off on the towel, that it was really his thing, the whole spouting-his-feelings thing, I mean.

I think females, in general, I mean, put too much stock in what people say, instead of watching what they do. I mean, look at us…we read and watch romances and swoon when the hero finally admits to his feelings, but just because he says it, does it mean it's true? Daniel'd had a way with words, and I can admit to falling for what he'd told me, more than I'd fallen for him. And action-wise, he'd shown something completely different. One hundred and eighty degrees different, if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty about it.

In contrast, Dean had spent most of the night, when he should have been sleeping, looking for me. That said a whole lot, didn't it? Rubbing the heel of my hand hard against my forehead, I tried to make the things I knew about him add up to what Lauren had told me.

"Uh," he said from behind me and I looked around to see him standing close. "I've been, uh, thinking…'bout, you know…" he trailed off and took a breath.

"I should have told you, straight up, why I took so long," he said, and I blinked at the unexpectedness of that. He reached out, his fingertips just grazing the side of my face, pushing aside a couple of wayward curls there. "I'm sorry I didn't."

You see, this is what I'm talking about, and what, ultimately, I guess I was trying to fit into place. He didn't pretend that none of it was his fault, that it was all on me. A lot of guys would've, you know. Guys who weren't honest with themselves or with other people. Guys who weren't trying to make it work.

"Why didn't you?" I asked, repressing a sudden impulse to lean into him.

"I don't know," he admitted, lifting the sore shoulder in a half-shrug. "I had the feeling you'd think the worst," he added, the corner of his mouth tucking in at the irony of that.

"Yeah," I acknowledged. "Well, you were right, but I only thought the worst because you weren't being straight with me. No lies, remember?"

"Yeah."

Lessons. Are all relationships really lessons for being more yourself, disguised with emotions and physical attraction and a host of other distractions that seemed to obscure the very reasons for being in them? I had a nasty, suspicious feeling they were. If I could fight my way through the confusing thickets of old baggage and feelings and doubts that came along with them, would I find that on the other side, I could find a place where most of my less-than-wonderful memories would be forgotten, and I'd be able to be myself without feeling like I should apologise for it?

"So, uh, you still mad at me?" he asked, breaking through those profoundly unhelpful-at-this-minute thoughts as he took a step nearer.

I looked into his face and his feelings were all on display, despite the one-sided smile he was trying to hide them behind. There was uncertainty and something else that I couldn't exactly define but which seemed to be a mix of hope and vulnerability.

"I'm never mad at you," I told him, and it was the truth. I was mad at myself usually.

"Could've fooled me," he argued softly.

"I –" I hadn't been mad, I'd been…not scared, not hurt, something in between. "I needed some time, to, uh, figure it out."

"Did you? Figure it out?"

"It's my problem," I said, as honestly as I could. "My baggage, my reactions."

"You can trust me."

"I know."

For a moment we just stood there, me with my back against the sink, him not more than a foot away, looking at each other and trying, I think, to become psychic by wishing it.

Never happen, I thought as his thoughts weren't magically revealed to me. We were going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. I took a step forward, put my arm around his non-injured shoulder and rose up on my toes. Thankfully he got the message – 'cause I couldn't quite reach without some help – and he ducked his head, his breath warm on my lips.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"So, uh, wait a minute," Dean said to Kevin as he watched him demolish his second plate of bacon and eggs. "You showed the King of Hell how to open a Hell gate? So that he can let out all the demons in one go?!"

Kevin looked up at him, offended. "What? No, I told him I knew how to open one, but I was using a spell to destroy the demons instead. That's how I got out," he said, wiping his mouth and looking back down at the plate. "There're hundreds of spells on that thing."

"Sonofabitch!"

"What about closing the gates, Kevin?" Sam asked, collecting his and Lauren's plates and walking around the table for Dean's. "What do we have to do?"

"That's –" Kevin said, pausing as he finished chewing his food. " – harder," he continued once he'd swallowed. "The tablet isn't a book. No page of contents, no chapters. Everything's all mixed together. I can't read it linearly."

"So…" Dean looked at him then at Sam. "How long are we talking here?"

"I don't know," Kevin replied, wiping the runny eggs with a biscuit and shovelling the lot in his mouth. I guessed he was hungry. He'd been through two bowls of oatmeal before the two serves of bacon and eggs, and he didn't seem to be ready to stop eating.

"Okay," Sam said, deflecting his brother's impatience. "How can we help?"

Picking up his coffee and washing the last mouthful down, Kevin shook his head. "You can't." He made a vague gesture around the room. "I, uh, just have to keep going until I get enough notes or the headaches get too bad."

He frowned a bit, as if he was remembering something. "It's not the same as the Leviathan tablet was. No clue why."

"Alright, well, you're safe here," Dean said, getting up. "As soon as you've finished your lumberjack's special, you can get back to it."

"Kevin, when you saw the part about the closing of the gates, can you recall what it said?" Lauren asked.

Putting down his fork, Kevin closed his eyes and thought about it. "Uh, something about…banishing all demons from the face of the earth and locking them away, in the, uh deepest pit. Forever."

"Sounds perfect," Dean remarked with a smirk.

"What about the souls?" Lauren pressed, flicking a frown at Dean.

"No," Kevin opened his eyes as he said it. "Souls go in. They can't return, but they still go in."

"See? All good!" Dean looked at Lauren, who nodded reluctantly.

"We'll have to get the tablet before I can start on it," Kevin said, standing up and stretching.

"What?" Dean swung around to look at him.

"What?" Sam pivoted in his chair and spoke at the same time. "I thought – I saw – you had it, in your bag!"

"No, that's the Leviathan tablet I've been lugging around," Kevin said serenely. "I thought I could use it as a decoy if I was found."

"Where's the Demon tablet?" Dean asked through closed teeth, with what I thought was an inordinate amount of control, when you considered that he'd thought they were all home and hosed.

"Safe."

"Safe?" Sam's voice rose.

"Yeah, I stashed it somewhere safe," Kevin said, with a shrug. "It's in Wyoming."

Getting to his feet, Sam's forehead creased up madly. "Wyoming's not 'safe'!"

"Sam, take it easy," Dean said soothingly. "If the kid says it safe, it's safe. Where in Wyoming?"

"Laramie."

"Okay then," he said and I could see him calculating distance and time rapidly. "We can be there by one –" Checking his watch, he looked back at Kevin. "Grab the rock, and be back here tonight. Let's roll."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

In reality, it was four days later that they came back, with Kevin, and his mother, but without the tablet.

Dean had called from Laramie when it became apparent that the tablet had first been stolen from Kevin's safe hiding place and then pawned and then was going to be sold at an auction. He was at the warehouse of some god, he said on the phone, and then a bunch of alarms had gone off in the background and he said he'd call back.

Which he did, an hour later, to tell us that Crowley was there and there was no way they were going to be able to get the tablet without some serious money. Lauren checked the accounts that had been left for the last fifty-odd years, accruing interest and gaining in value, with no outgoing expenses to speak of, and told Dean that he had close to eighty-six million to play with. He was silent for several minutes then hung up.

Five minutes later, he called back to ask me what dwarven gold was. I told him it was gold mined by dwarves, and probably worked by them too and that garnered another few minutes of silence and another hang up.

Lauren looked at me after that call, and we made a tacit and mutual decision to avoid speculating on what was going on in…wherever it was they now were.

In between the random calls, we'd managed to get through most of the building on the cleaning schedule, and Lauren had familiarised herself pretty thoroughly with the library and artefact sections. The file rooms were well-ordered and using the ancient intercom system, we checked that the computer did contain them all in the database, me on the search screen of the laptop in the library, her sneezing her way through the files and cases in the store-rooms.

Given that it's more comfortable to fall asleep in a bed than in a chair, the first night I took the history and the first volume of the Apprentice training books up to the bedroom and got into the habit of retiring up there, after our evening meals, to read through most of the night.

The days passed more or less in the same way, going through the bunker and getting to know it, cleaning, reading, going through the printout bins for weirdnesses that Charlie and Sam's bots had flagged, looking through some of the more interesting case files of the previous Legacies…just waiting, mostly. On the third day with still no sign of their return, and a single terse call from Sam telling us they'd be another day or two, Lauren spent a day with Larry, driving to Benoit in the mint-condition, pale green T-bird from the bunker's garage.

I gave her a silk scarf and a pair of cat's-eye sunglasses and told her to drive with the top down. She looked very much like Grace Kelly in the darned thing and I took a picture for Sam as she drove out through the big garage doors.

I would've gone with her but the order's history was bugging me. I'd finished it the night before, and the overall picture was of an autonomous society of very intelligent people, women as well as men, by the way, who had been chosen to the calling through a combination of smarts and experience or a belief in a universe vastly more complicated than science could explain.

The bloodlines of the Legacies, up to the twentieth century, had accounted for only half of those trained and taught in the far-flung groups, which contradicted both Dominic's and Larry's accounts. Most of the Legacies came to the order through their studies in other fields, or even from the Church herself, some of them priests who'd abandoned special duties to study things considered heretical and forbidden by their faith. But…sometime between the two world wars, things had changed a lot. And there was no explanation for why.

We didn't get a call that evening, and we both went to bed worried.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Yawning after my third night without a great deal of sleep, I spooned honey over my oatmeal and looked at Lauren as I stirred it in. "What did Larry say about the change in the leadership of the order?"

She was slicing fruit across the top of hers and she stopped, frowning down at the chunks of strawberries. "He wouldn't talk about it, not directly," she said, putting down the knife and picking up her spoon.

"You know how he was when we were there before," she continued. "I think someone from Boston did find him, and scared him."

At that, I frowned. "One of his colleagues?"

"I don't think they are colleagues anymore, at least not the way they had been," she said. "His wife, Vera, she almost didn't let me in, and they were both nervy, you know, like people who think someone's listening to their conversations."

"You think someone is?"

"I don't know," she said with a sigh and spooned up a load of oatmeal and fruit. "I think we need to keep an eye on them." She looked at me. "When I told him that we were thinking of including more hunters in the group here, he looked terrified, Terry. Why would that be?"

"Wickfield wasn't keen on the idea of hunters either," I said, remembering the way he'd swallowed when I told him about Dean and Sam. "He acted like there wasn't a need for them, but the history was real clear that hunters were partners with the Legacies for hundreds of years, and some of the Legacies were hunters, and the other way around."

I pushed my food around in the bowl for a moment, then another memory from the book caught at me. "You know, Lebanon and Boston were supposed to be the only groups in this continent?"

"Yeah," Lauren said, pausing with her spoon halfway to her mouth. "Why?"

"The history said that there was a group in Chicago as well."

"Did it say what happened to it?"

"Not really," I said, trying to remember the wording. "Just that it became nonviable and was abandoned."

"Nonviable? In Chicago?" She put down her spoon and rubbed her fingertips over her forehead. "This is getting too strange. As soon as they get back, I think we need to see Larry again, all of us. And take Castiel."

I felt my brows shooting up at the thought. "Why?"

"I think that Larry and Vera are in danger, Terry. If they are being spied on somehow, Sam or Cas can find any kind of listening device, technological or supernatural." She tapped her fingernails on the tabletop. "I think they should come back here with us, until we can find out what's going on."

That was a whole new level of paranoia, I thought, letting my spoon fall back into the bowl.

"What do you think is going on, Lauren?" I asked her, curious as to why she seemed to be jumping from bad to worse case scenarios. It was weird, I could see that but was it _that_ weird? It was, after all, a society of people who'd dealt with weird for nearly a thousand years.

"I don't know, not really," she said, shaking her head. "But look, what if there was a take-over of some kind, and the attacks on the Legacies of this group, and maybe the Chicago group too, were planned by someone who was inside, not just a demon attack? If Larry is the only one we can trust to find out what happened, he's not going to talk in that house with his wife being possibly held hostage."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The front door ker-chunked at eight-forty that evening and Dean, Sam and Kevin came in, followed by a diminutive Asian woman who was clearly Kevin's mother. Their boots rang on the iron steps and all of them looked exhausted.

I looked a question at Dean and he rolled his eyes as he came up the library steps. "Uh, Terry, Lauren, this is Linda Tran."

Sharp black eyes ran up and down us and she nodded sharply. "He told us that this place was safe," she said, jerking her head toward Dean.

I nodded. "It is." I looked past her to the men. "What happened?"

"Long story," Sam said, walking around the Trans to wrap an arm around Lauren. "Anything to eat?"

Dean gestured to the Trans to follow his brother and stayed in front of me as they walked away. "Everything alright here?" he asked, his gaze scanning the room restlessly.

"Not really, but nothing concrete either," I said, going to him and putting my arms around him. I felt him relax a little and looked up. "Got a short version or do I have to wait for the director's cut?"

"Crowley's got the tablet," he said tiredly, dropping his bags on the floor to put his arms around me and return the hug. I felt a long, hard exhale against my hair as he ducked his head. "He had demons watching Kevin's mom and Kevin insisted we bring her here."

"Well, there's room."

"Yeah, but this isn't a democracy," he said, mumbling the words against the side of my neck. "I don't think the pint-sized pain-in-the-ass gets that."

I smiled and he pulled back a little to look at me as he felt the lift of my cheek. "We'll figure it out. We probably need to bring Larry and his wife here as well," I said, figuring I'd get all the yelling out of the way in one hit.

"What!? Why?"

"Lauren thinks they're in danger, from the Boston group – it's complicated, and it's not certain, and you should have something to eat first," I told him, stopping his next protest with a determined kiss.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The dining table looked festive, I thought, as I set my plate down at the end next to Dean and looked along it. Sam and Lauren were seated opposite us, the Trans facing each other at the other end. Lauren had set and lit two of the silver candelabra for the table's centre, and the soft light made everyone look slightly less tired than they were. I visualised two more people here and realised that cooking – and cleaning, I remembered with a wince – were going to get a lot more challenging with eight.

"Whaddaya mean, scared?" Dean demanded, loading his plate with meat and creamy mash and adding a teaspoon of peas under protest when I looked pointedly at the dish of them.

"That's why you two need to be there," Lauren said, hiding her exasperation pretty well, I thought. "And Castiel. Something's spooked them, and Larry's the only one left from here, the only one who can tell us if there's something going on with the order that we need to be aware of."

"Alright," Sam interjected smoothly, attempting to diffuse both Lauren's worries and Dean's reluctance to acknowledge yet another problem. "We'll see them tomorrow, right?" He looked at Dean, who shrugged.

"We got Crowley in the wind, with the tablet, gunning for these two," he said sharply, waving his fork in the direction of the Trans. "We gotta find that tablet, priority one. This stuff can wait for a while."

"I don't think it can," I spoke up hesitantly. I didn't want to lay more crap on him that he already had, but ignoring it didn't seem like such a good idea to me either. "Look, I don't know what's going on but most of this place's history has been a – a kind of a study group. No leaders, everyone pretty much equal, Legacies, hunters, even the people they had in training or were teaching. But something happened relatively recently to change that." I looked at Sam then back to Dean. "You heard Wickfield – he had to let his superiors know about the grave, and ask about you…before 1914, that wasn't the way they operated. There were no superiors. And each group was autonomous."

Dean leaned on the table. "So what? They decided that management was better."

"I don't think so," I said. "I think someone or something made a change and whoever didn't agree with it was wiped out."

"What?" Sam asked, his forehead creasing up.

Lauren said, "We don't have proof, not yet, but there was a group in Chicago and they were attacked two years before this group was. And Terry's right, sometime in between 1914 and 1950 things were changed, but at first, it seemed to be happening subtly, at least according to their own written history. Then something happened fast, something that the groups didn't agree with."

Dean rubbed a hand over his jaw as he thought about that. "Alright, we'll get Larry in the morning," he conceded unwillingly. "But that's it. You two have to deal with whatever he's got to say. Sam and me, we have to find that tablet, 'cause shutting down Hell trumps whatever these dicks have been doing."

He turned back to his plate and Sam said, "We could call Bobby, get him back here, to help you guys with this?"

I looked at Lauren and shook my head. "Bobby's trying to get a headcount of the hunters that are left," I told him. "He's on the road for a while."

"And what do we do while we're waiting for this Demon tablet to turn up?" Mrs Tran asked suddenly from the end of the table.

"Sit tight," Dean growled back at her. "Read up on whatever you think is missing from your education," he added with an airy hand wave back toward the library.

"You and Kevin will be safe here, Mrs Tran," Sam said, countering his brother's belligerence. "Kevin, since you've still got the Leviathan tablet, it would be useful to have it transcribed for the files here?"

Kevin nodded disinterestedly and ate his dinner mechanically. I had the feeling that Crowley's presence at the auction had been more taxing than Dean or Sam had let on.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Stretching out under Dean, every part of me warm and still tingling and flushed with endorphins or whatever those tricky little things are that make muscles and tendons loose and relaxed, nervous system spark and hum contentedly, my thoughts circle lazily in meandering loops, I felt his ribs expand as he took a deep breath and I remembered that I wanted him to see the history.

"Stop wriggling," he murmured and lifted his weight off to one side.

"I just want to–" I started to say as I continued my wriggle to the edge of the bed. It was actually closer than I'd realised and I felt the empty space yawn out before I could stop myself falling off it, my feet still caught in the covers I hadn't yet pushed aside.

"Ow!" My elbow hit the ground first and I rolled onto my shoulders, feet still caught in the sheets that Dean's weight was holding firm to the bed as his faced appeared over the edge.

"God, woman," he muttered, disappearing and freeing the tangle, allowing my legs to drop off the bed and join me on the floor. "The hell you doin'?"

"–show you the part about Chicago," I finished my original intended sentence as I wriggled into an upright position and onto my knees. My elbow was throbbing, right on the funny bone, and I cradled it as I crawled to the nightstand and stood up. I wasn't as mortified as I usually was, I realised. It'd been a while since I'd actually done something truly clumsy in front of him, and I wondered if I was developing a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to my own ineptitude.

Picking up the book, I found the chapter and page and handed it to him, plonking myself back on the bed and wiggling my fingers to stop the funny bone from its tingling and aching.

He read through the bland wording of the group's attack and the unexplained decision to abandon the city, brows drawn together as he registered the lack of information in the account. It was noticeable even without the comparison to the rest of the book's dense detailing of events.

"Alright, it's weird," he agreed, shifting up the bed to lean back against the pillows. He flicked through the rest of the history and looked over to the nightstand where the other books were lying beside the lamp. "Why're you reading this crap anyway?"

"I –" I looked away, not sure of what to say. I wasn't ready to admit that I felt completely useless. "Um…I thought it would useful."

His eyes narrowed a bit, obviously gauging that innocuous comment for levels of truth. "Yeah," he allowed after a moment. "It might be."

Relaxing at his acceptance, I leaned against the pillows, putting the book back on the nightstand when he passed it over. "What happened, when you found Kevin?"

Dean blew out a soft exhale as he looked away. "Crowley had his girlfriend," he said. "Snapped her neck in front of him."

Looking at his profile, I guessed that had hit more than Kevin. I moved closer to him and he lifted his arm automatically, curling it around me as I leaned against his chest.

"We couldn't do anything," he said after a moment. "Sonofabitch had a demon in her, and he told it to withdraw long enough so that Kevin knew how scared she was…Kevin did the right thing, but it cost."

Everything cost, I thought, a bit tiredly. I could see he was thinking that as well.

"If we can close the gates, lock them all up, it'll be a different world," he said, half to himself, I think. "Stop things like that from happening, take it back to just monsters and ghosts…"

Personally, I thought that the monsters and ghosts weren't going to be the picnic he was envisaging, but I knew what he meant. No demons, with their hunger for torture and pain, that would level the field for the hunters. Demons – and their counterparts – were too strong for most hunters to deal with. Too powerful for the population to withstand. And the world wasn't getting better, it was getting worse.

He rolled over, sliding down a little, and resting his head against my shoulder, his cheek over the slope of my breast and both arms wrapped around me. "We've never gotten this close to shutting it all down, making it end," he said, his voice so low I had to listen carefully. "I want it so bad I can taste it."

I slid my arms around him, holding him tightly. Everything in his life, everything that had gone wrong in his life, had been because of Heaven and Hell, I thought. Every death, every loss, every failure…it was no effort to see how much he needed to find the tablet, do whatever it took to make sure that it couldn't keep happening.

"We'll find it," I said, not sure of that, but saying it anyway. Over the course of their lives, they'd fought demons and angels and the Devil himself and had won. It wasn't wise to write them off as being unable to do anything. "We will."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The next morning, Sam, Dean and Lauren took off to get Larry and his wife, and I showed Kevin the office Bobby had used, lighting the fire in the hearth and giving him an armful of blank notepads and a handful of pens. He looked around the room blankly then sat down at the desk, taking the Leviathan tablet out of his backpack and setting it on the polished wood. Mrs Tran stood next to me, watching him nervously as he picked up a pen, poised it over a clean, blank page and set his hand on the tablet. Both of us jumped slightly when he jerked on contact with the stone, his eyes rolling up slightly.

"Is that how he reads it?" I whispered to his mother, not wanting to interrupt the trance or whatever it was.

She looked at me sharply and shrugged. "First time I've seen it," she said bitterly. "Is he going to be alright?"

"He's the prophet," I said, feeling the inadequacy of that response in the look she gave me. "He was…um…made for doing this, I guess."

"Alright," she said, turning away for the door. "We'll have eight people here, so what's the plan for looking after them?"

"Plan?" I repeated, hurrying after her and pulling the door closed behind me.

"Plan, plan!" she snapped at me. I couldn't take offence, her son was a prophet of the Lord and that can't have been an easy thing to have to deal with. "It will be chaos if everyone does for themselves."

"Uh…"

"Good grief, girl," she said, rolling her eyes. "Where's the kitchen?"

We spent the next two hours inventorying the kitchen. It was not fun. After I'd trailed around after her, making notes on a pad about supplies, quantities and recipes, I think she took pity on me and shooed me out, sitting down at the pine table and making lists of her own.

To be honest, if she wanted to run this ship, she was welcome to it, I thought, hurrying away from the kitchen and going to the ops room to check the printer bins.

The search bots that Charlie and Sam had set up usually returned a good quantity of weird stories every morning. Some of them were just weird, you know, the sort of thing that ends up in the National Enquirer or on the Jerry Springer show kind of weird. Some looked weird but had a reasonably easy-to-logic-out scientific explanation. A small percentage, thankfully for us, were truly weird, the Winchester-kind-of-weird, and I skimmed through the reams of paper, putting the ones that seemed to fit into the last category to one side and shredding the rest.

This morning there were two reports that seemed to be jobs. One was a news item from Kearney, Missouri. A woman had run over her husband in the car under which he'd been changing the oil. Not content, apparently, with driving it off the jack and crushing him beneath the oil pan, she'd reversed over him as well. She was in the hospital, shaken and claiming she had no memory of it. I hesitated over it, because sometimes people do just go nuts and take it out on their spouses, but there was something that didn't exactly mesh with that about the report and I made up a file for it instead.

The other report was vague but unsettling. Some reporter from Washington state had noticed a number of pleasure craft setting off for distant destinations and failing to make them. There were virtually no facts to go along with the speculations, other than the list of boats that had set off into the big blue and never arrived. The list was quite long, and the reporter was demanding that the Coast Guard – or the Navy – do something about it. I read it through twice, wondering if it was a hunter thing or just one of those unfortunate things that happen to people who set off to sail across the oceans.

Finally, I took the report and sat down in front of a computer in the ops room, typing in the list of vessels' names. Interestingly enough, all of the vessels had left from Seattle, San Francisco or Vancouver. All had been the property of rich men and women. And left out of the news report was the fact that not one had managed to keep pre-arranged radio skeds with their friends or family past the second day at sea. No debris had been found for any of them. I ran another search on accidents at sea. There were plenty, but the causes, ranging from gas explosions to run-ins with floating shipping containers or whales, all left something behind, floating around on the ocean to account for some kind of story for the accident. These vessels had left none.

Of course, the very first thing that popped into my mind was some kind of sea monster. Heh. What can I say? I grew up reading Jules Verne. Even if it was a sea monster, I couldn't imagine what Dean and Sam could do about that.

I made up a file for the report, adding the printouts of the small amount of additional information I was able to find and left it with the other one. If they were interested, they'd look, I thought.

It was funny, but it didn't even occur to me that I was actually doing the research and preliminary triage on possible cases for them. It was something that Lauren and I had just gotten into the habit of doing, every morning, since Charlie had set it all up. I don't know how useful it would be, in the long run, but the brothers had already taken it for granted that there'd be a stack of files in the basket at the end of the library table nearest the ops room every day. Of course, it was getting full now, since they'd been chasing other things over the last few weeks.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I took one look at Lauren's face as she came down the stairs, and knew instantly what they'd found. Dean confirmed it a moment later as the door to the bunker shut and locked itself.

"Both dead," he said, following Sam and Lauren across the ops room. "Throats cut."

"I should've brought them back with me when I was there," Lauren said, leaning on the strategy table. "I knew they were scared."

"Demons?" I asked the brothers, and Sam nodded.

"Sulphur at the door and around the bodies," he said, going to a computer at the long curving desk and sitting down.

Lauren lifted her head and looked at me. "Sam, the program hasn't shown demon sign except for where you've been for the last two weeks," she said slowly.

"Maybe you missed it," Dean said, going to stand behind Sam's chair and leaning on the counter beside him.

"No," she said positively. "We didn't."

"Maybe – hell, I don't know," he grated, keeping his eyes on the screen in front of his brother. "Maybe it's not foolproof."

"It wouldn't be that hard for someone who was trained in all kinds of supernatural lore to fake a demon attack?" I suggested tentatively. Dean looked around at that, and Sam stopped typing.

"You mean one of the guys from Boston?" Dean asked me, his expression sceptical.

"You could do it," I told him, trying to sound reasonable. "If you wanted to fool another hunter, for instance."

"She's right," Sam said slowly, looking up at him. "We could."

"Why?" Dean looked at me, pivoting around and leaning back against the curving desk top, arms folded across his chest in that make-me-believe-it attitude. "Why would they fake a demon attack?"

"To fool anyone who wanted to get Larry's answers?" Lauren suggested, her voice a little bit tart. "To fool us into believing that it's demons, not the order, so we're not on guard against them?"

I spread my hands out a little helplessly as I looked at him. "Why would demons attack an old man and woman in their home?"

"Why does Crowley do anything?!" Dean snapped back. "They're demons!"

The search Sam had run beeped discreetly and he looked back at the screen. "No demon sign," he said to his brother quietly. "Maybe they're right."

I could see Dean's mouth tightening. "Awesome. So we're sitting ducks here!"

"No," Lauren said. "I think if they could attack the bunker, they would've, at least if they could've kept their own hands clean." She looked at me. "That would've been what they did with Chicago, right? Told something else about the location and let demons or monsters do their dirty work?"

I shrugged. I had no idea. "I guess so," I said, thinking of Dominic's reluctance for hands-on action. "They weren't – they didn't used to be like that but Dominic sure didn't want to get his suit mucked up."

Dean started pacing, and Sam logged into a nationwide traffic cam site. Benoit had two cameras, one a red-light camera near the centre of town, the other a speed camera not far from the Ganem house on the way back to the highway. He set the criteria for the day before and the stills started to flick by.

"Stop." Dean looked at the screen as Sam hit the pause key. "Not too many of those checking out Kansas," he said, mostly to himself as he looked at the car in the image.

He turned back to Lauren and shrugged. "Alright, it was a set up. Now they'll come here?"

Lauren looked at me, the same thought going through both our minds, I think. "No," I said. "Larry wasn't kidding when he said this place is impregnable against anything. Doesn't matter what they send, they won't get in here."

"They got to Larry's group," Dean started to argue and Lauren nodded agreement.

"In Benoit, at an ordinary gentleman's club, not here," she reminded him. "I think they'll try and sweet-talk us first."

"Offer help, offer information," I agreed, trying to remember what, if anything, we'd told Dominic about us. There really wasn't much, except that they could probably find out the entire Winchester history by the simple expedient of ordering their darned lives online at Amazon.

Dean's phone rang and he nearly jumped out of his skin, swearing and swinging around as he pulled the offending item from his coat pocket. "WHAT!"

"No, uh, sorry…just had…never mind, what's up?" he said into the phone. "Alright. No, that's good. Uh…look, we're kind of on red alert – yeah – no – uh, no, Sam'll meet you at the – um – place you found us before. Okay? Okay."

He hung up and turned back. "Charlie's gonna help," he said. "Sam, she'll be at the mall in Hays in a coupe of hours –"

"Got it," Sam said, getting up and picking up his gear bag.

I looked at Dean and realised that Sam going to pick up Charlie, without a murmur of protest, was something that the brothers had discussed before. Not this specific need, today, perhaps, but the general ballpark. Which meant that Lauren had told Sam about our conversation, and Sam had therefore told Dean. Who was now trying to make sure that I didn't need to worry. Ever heard the term 'handled'? Like animals and pop stars, I'd been 'handled'.

There wasn't any point to complaining about it, I thought, walking over to the desk and looking at the car on the screen. I'd brought that particular disgrace on myself.

"Why are you sure this is them?" I asked, not really that curious about it but wanting a change in subject.

"Bentley Mulsanne Le Mans edition," he answered briefly. "That's the Benajfield model and there's only forty-eight of them in the US," he added, his lip curling up mockingly. "Rich boys' toy."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

Dean looked into the office, brows rising slightly as he took in Kevin, studiously bent over the tablet on the desk, and Mrs Tran, sitting at a smaller desk we'd moved in at her insistence, her fingers flying across the keyboard of a laptop, her eyes glued to the piles of notes next to her.

"Seems she used to do data entry, back when Kevin's father was alive," I muttered to him as we backed out and closed the door.

"So he's got his own secretary?" Dean grinned at the thought.

"More or less." I headed for the kitchen. "And chief cook and bottle washer."

"What?"

"Well, sitting typing for eight hours a day isn't enough to keep Mrs Tran occupied, it turns out," I said, crossing to the counter that held the coffee pot. "She likes to keep busy, apparently, so she took over as cook, and assorted other household tasks."

"That a bad thing?" he asked curiously, taking the cup I handed him.

"No," I said vehemently. "It's a very, very good thing. She has put in a request for a big dishwasher, though. And she wants to put new washers and dryers in the laundry."

"Not so hard."

I filled my cup and turned around, leaning my hip against the counter. "You heard from Bobby?"

"This morning," he said. "He's in Texas. Why?"

"Nothing, not really," I said. "I just wondered."

I missed him, but I didn't want to say that. Dean missed him too, and we both knew Bobby was going to be happier living in his own house, with Sheriff Mills or not, than he would be here.

He looked around the kitchen. "The Trans won't be here forever."

I smiled a little. "I know, and it's not that they're a bother –"

"– just hard to relax with a lot of strangers around, yeah," he finished my thought and his coffee, putting the cup on the counter. "I had a look through the files – Sam pulled the police reports on the one in Kearney."

"You think it's something?"

"Don't know, but it's not a big haul so we'll check it out," he said. "We're getting nowhere fast with finding Crowley."

"He can't do anything with that tablet without Kevin," I pointed out.

"No, an' that's the only reason I'm not out there, scouring the freakin' planet for him," he said. "I called Cas, told him about what happened to Larry Ganem. He said he'd see what he could dig up on what happened to the order."

"Heaven's a mess, isn't it?"

He made a face. "So he says."

"Lauren said they never were exactly all on the same side, even before Lucifer and the rest of it," I told him. "She said that's why her father Fell, he preferred Earth."

"Ah, that's good to know," Dean said sardonically, sliding along the edge of the counter until his shoulder touched mine. "Do you want to come with us, to Kearney?"

I thought about it. It would be nice to spend some time with him without the endless pow-wows and worries that seemed to be filling our every waking moment here, but at the same time, it wasn't all that smart to go gallivanting around the country for me at the moment. I was still unwarded, visible, according to Cas, to anything that had a mind to look for me. Dean had talked about at least getting an anti-possession tattoo but first there hadn't been time, and lately, of course, there wasn't a need. So I shook my head reluctantly.

"No, I'll stay here and maybe we could…uh, think about another date, when you get back?"

His eyes brightened with the memory of the last one, sliding down the mountain in the snow notwithstanding, I presumed, and nodded, glancing down at his watch. "Sam should be back," he said, and we both pushed off the counter and headed for the library. As it turned out, it was one of the cases I probably would've been useful on, if only to help Garth stop Dean from trying to shoot his brother.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Charlie took over the office in the computer room and for twenty hours out of every twenty-four, stayed there. She ate with us, when she remembered, otherwise Mrs Tran or Lauren or I took a tray down to her, and she got her forty-five minutes or however long needed in the way of sleep on the long four-seater sofa in the office. I thought she was going to burn out going as hard as she was, but she cheerfully told me she always worked like this. Hackers. What else is there to say?

Kevin was working on the tablet in fits and starts, doing eighteen-hour stretches punctuated by two days of sleeping, his mother keeping up with the transcriptions. His estimate of translating the entire tablet of information about the oldest creatures on earth was a hundred-and-forty years. I thought he was joking, but apparently he wasn't. Cas had said there was only one prophet at a time, and they usually spent their lives in the study of the tablets. I couldn't make the math fit on that one so I dropped it.

Dean called from Kearney and asked Lauren and I to look up everything we could find on ghosts, vengeful spirits, possessing spirits and the like and he called Bobby as well. With both sets of information, they were pretty sure that the spirit causing all the trouble was the murdered brother of a Civil War soldier, thanks to the input of Garth, who'd shown up in Kearney to investigate the murders as well, but it took a day or two longer to figure out how the spirit was transferring from victim to victim and by then it was too late.

Now, I didn't find out any of this until the brothers got back to the bunker. And even then we had to do it the long, involved and roundabout way. Sam told Lauren the first night they were back. Dean maintained that things were fine, had gotten a little out-of-hand for a short time but were back to normal. Lauren told me the next morning what had happened when one of the possessed victims had pressed the penny into Dean's hand while attacking him, and it wasn't until the next night that I managed to talk to Dean about it.

We were sitting in the study I'd commandeered for reading about the order, the fire laid and lit, talking over and around Cas' lack of response, the impossibility of tracking Crowley, Kevin's hundred-and-forty year schedule and a bunch of other not-really-related stuff.

"What happened in Kearney?" I asked him, picking up the decanter of whiskey and adding an inch to his glass, and a half-inch to mine to be companionable.

He looked at me and rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. "I don't know," he said. "I don't remember much, just, uh, flashes. Not in any kind of order."

"Sam was pissed?"

He nodded. "Garth told me that I was yelling something about the choices he'd made."

"Choices like Ruby?" I asked with an internal wince.

"Yeah, pretty much like that," he said heavily. "He said that you must've been lying when you told him that I'd forgiven him for all that to come out the way it did."

He picked up his glass and looked at the contents, swirling them around a little. "I had forgiven him, you know," he said, his expression a bit bewildered, as much by the discrepancy as by the confusion of not remembering things the way Sam could. "I mean, it still hurt, and the trust – you know, it's hard – I can't just…"

"This ghost or whatever it was," I said slowly. "It sounds like it was really reaching for things for people to feel betrayed about, wasn't it? I mean, a prom date decades before? Some guy called out in a neighbourhood softball game? It was looking for things that reflected the betrayal that had happened to it, and just not able to find those things."

Looking up at me, he frowned slightly. "You think it took what was left of what I'd felt and then turned up the volume?"

"I think it was desperate to get revenge for what'd happened and used whatever poor excuse of a bad feeling it could find. Yeah, and turned it up to eleven." I looked at him. "Dean, Sam apologised, over and over to you about choosing Ruby, about not listening to you, about thinking he was the stronger one, that you'd been broken in Hell. You were the one who couldn't hear it back then."

"That's not true," he protested, straightening up in the chair. "I –"

He ducked his head, remembering, I think, that it was true. When he looked up again, he looked bone-tired.

"You're right. I didn't want to hear 'sorry'. I didn't even want to hear him say that he'd done all those things out loud. I just wanted the trust I had in him back and at the time, I thought that was never going to happen," he admitted, a little unwillingly.

"Sam needs to tell you he is sorry for those things, Dean, and you need to let him," I said, knowing up front that the suggestion would go down like a lead balloon. "He needs to see you acknowledge it."

"What about me?" he asked, his defences rising again. "When do I get what I need? What I want?"

I looked at him for a long moment, and I could feel my heartbeat, somewhere at the base of my throat, way too high for where it should be.

"What do you need? What do you want?" I asked, wishing I didn't have to, wishing – again – that I had been able to let this conversation drop before it got started.

His gaze lifted to mine with a flash of guilt as he realised what he'd said. "Terry, that's not what – that is not what I meant – goddammit!"

I was holding myself in that chair by willpower alone, and I was darned – damned! – proud of myself for not just abandoning the conversation when it got tricky, and he ruined it all by launching himself to his feet and leaving the room, before I could even say anything else.

Had I pushed too hard on something he didn't know how to talk about? Or were the things he wanted and needed nothing to do with me? Gee, what a great choice! I couldn't come up with a third option and to be honest, I didn't really want to try. I did get that he'd been pissed, that it felt to him like he was the one constantly having to compromise – his principles, his feelings, himself. Oh, I got that, alright. I didn't know if he was feeling that I was forcing him into those kinds of compromises as well. And that sucked.

After Daniel, I spent about six months doing nothing but thinking about what'd happened, what I'd done wrong, the usual suspects. It had taken another six months for me to realise that I'd made a dumb mistake, and that was all. No massive personality misjudgements, no terrible selfishness on my part driving him away. Just a dumb mistake to trust someone who wasn't trustworthy. Sounds simple when it's put like that, doesn't it?

I picked up my glass and tossed the contents down, putting the glass down by feel as my eyes watered furiously. I found the bottle the same way and sloshed some more in, the sharp bite of the fumes suggesting that some of what I'd poured might have gone all over the table. It was the good stuff, but I wasn't what you might call a regular drinker and it still had its impact on me. An example of which was why I'd refilled the glass, in point of fact. I wanted to sleep. Just escape all this stupid thinking and wake up tomorrow with, I hoped, a better frame of mind. I didn't have quite the same bravado about swallowing the second serve in a single, searing mouthful, but I managed to get it down by dint of looking at and thinking of something else. Once past my tongue and nasal passages, it burned very pleasantly in my stomach and even left a nice aftertaste behind. I decided I could probably have a little more…just to ensure that I got off to the land of nod as easily as possible.

It might've been one or three later that I got up and went out, pulling the door closed behind me and turning for the stairs. By the time I'd reached the first landing, I was feeling just that little bit warm and uncoordinated. At the bedroom door, it took me a couple of goes to get the handle open. See what I mean about a cheap drunk? I made it inside, however, and into the bathroom, even managed to brush my teeth without stabbing myself with the toothbrush.

I didn't want to push Dean. At all. Ever. I wanted to trust him. I wanted him to trust me. Apparently, I thought, as I dragged off my clothes and left them in a Dean-like heap by the side of the bed, that was probably not going to happen any more than he could see a way to finding his way back to a rock-solid trust with his brother.

I'd like to say that didn't hurt, but I'd be lying and you know, I'm trying to get out of that habit. Sleep would make it better, I told myself, turning out the light by the simple expedient of swinging my arm toward it and somehow managing to knock the stupid thing to the floor. I figured it was, technically, out and closed my eyes.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"Terry?"

I struggled up through layers of confused dreams, feeling too hot, my tongue thick and my mouth dry, at the sound of his voice. "Wha–" I croaked, rolling over clumsily, barely able to see between the reluctance of my eyelids to rise beyond half-mast and the near-darkness in the room. "Who– Dean?"

"Yeah, it's me," he said, catching my wrist as it waved around in an ill-considered attempt to use centrifugal force to help me onto my side, and pulling me gently over to face him.

He was lying on top of the covers, probably one of the reasons I'd had such difficulty in moving around, his weight keeping the sheets pinned down on that side. Dressed, I thought blearily, feeling the soft fabric of his tee shirt under my hand.

"S'wrong?" I asked, patting his shirt since I didn't think I was really going to be articulate the full query.

"I – uh –," he said uncertainly, looking away. "I wasn't sure you'd, uh, want me here."

"S'alright," I told him, too tired to argue about anything or even worry about what he'd said. Morning would be soon enough to get into it. In the meantime, my temperature had dropped from sauna-sweat to ice-box chill, and I wriggled aside a bit, hoping it would indicate to him that he should get undressed, get under the covers and keep me warm.

He seemed to catch on to that, and let go of my hand, the mattress tipping as he got up and the rustles beside the bed suggesting that clothes were being shed. The mattress dipped again and he was under the covers, warm skin sliding against mine in a comforting wave of heat.

"You're cold," he said, not accusingly, but observationally as his arms wrapped around me.

I nodded and re-settled myself as close as I could get. He always seemed very on top of alcohol consumption but I'd seen him wasted a couple of times, and I'd seen the resulting hangovers and I figured he would figure out my internal temperature fluctuations without needing an explanation. Which was just as well because my moments of clarity were disappearing fast.

I was just drifting off again, my brain happy to shut down, when I heard his very soft whisper against my hair.

"Terry, I'm sorry."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I woke up very slowly and gradually, registering bits and pieces of consciousness in unconnected moments. The bed was deliciously warm and soft. There was a pale light filling the room, filtered through the thin silk curtains. It was quiet. I could smell Dean's scent, on the pillow next to me.

All very gentle and quite the way one should awaken, I think. No blaring klaxons of alarms in the mornings, scaring you into wakefulness with a pounding heart and high blood pressure.

I also registered that I was alone. Rolling over cautiously, I looked at the clock on the nightstand, which seemed to be intimating that it was past ten. It was possible, I thought. My focus moved to one side of the clock. A couple of Tylenol and a glass of water were sitting there.

Like Alice down the rabbit hole, the pills and water seemed to call out. Eat_ me. _Drink_ me. You'll _feel_ better_.

I didn't feel all that bad, to tell you truth. Probably the amount of sleep had helped with that. It'd been awhile since I'd gotten more than ten hours in a single stretch. I took the pills and washed them down with the water anyway, figuring a little extra help wasn't going to go astray. Sitting up, it seemed the next logical move should be a shower. Then definitely something to stop the fizzing and tumbling sensations in my stomach.

The pills were a good idea, once I'd attained standing altitude. My head started to throb gently and I walked very carefully from the bed to the bathroom, stepping straight into the tub and turning on the shower. I totally got why Dean loved his hot water systems. It's a small but easily available luxury, with an effect not unlike having a good foot massage – relaxing, soothing, peaceful and shut out from the hurly-burly of mainstream life by the water and the steam. Everyone should really appreciate their showers more.

By the time I made it downstairs, the headache had receded to the middle distance, my eyes were functioning more or less according to the manufacturer's specifications and my stomach was now writing out complaints forms by the handful. I could hear voices, raised and sharp from the other end of the hall and I turned away from them, going to the kitchen. I needed food, not acrimony, at this point in my life.

I heard the clunk of boots down the hall a few minutes later and braced myself, both hands curled around my cup of coffee. Dean barrelled into the kitchen and came to a dead stop as he saw me sitting at the table, his thunderous expression smoothing out.

"How's the headache?" he asked, only a little bit sardonically as he walked into the room, heading for the coffee pot.

"Not bad, thanks for the Tylenol," I said, swivelling on my backside as I watched him. "What's wrong?"

"Cas is here," he said, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. "He found Crowley."

"That's good, isn't it?" I asked, not sure why he wasn't out the door already. "When are you and Sam going?"

"I'm going in about ten minutes," he said, pouring the coffee and turning around. "Sam's not."

Ah, I thought sagely. That explained the thundercloud.

"Who's your backup?"

"Cas," he said, his mouth twitching up to one side in what could only be called a sour smile. I don't know what expression had appeared on my face, but the smile disappeared and he walked to the table, grabbing the chair next to me. "It'll be fine. We can take care of Crowley. We don't need Sam."

He did need Sam, I thought, looking at the shadow behind his eyes. But he wasn't going to admit to that now.

"What I said, last night –" he said, ducking his head. "It wasn't what I meant."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I just nodded. Whatever had driven him to blurt it out last night was buried again, and what was going on between him and Sam was enough to be going on with, considering he was about to take on the King of Hell.

"So…are we…alright?" he asked, brows raised questioningly as he looked up uncertainly from under them.

"Yeah," I told him. We were. The conversation was still going to have to happen sometime but for now it could be shelved. "We are."

Call me altruistic if you must. I thought it was more along the lines of selfishness, myself, since the risk of him getting hurt would be greater if he was distracted by personal crap whilst fighting the demon. I wanted him to be completely focussed on Crowley.

What he did next took me totally by surprise.

He kissed me.

Heh, well the act itself wasn't a surprise, but it was the way he did it that shocked me. I didn't think you could get conceptual stuff like apologies and need and longing across in a simple mouth-to-mouth interaction, but he really managed it. It was filled with tenderness…and some kind of promise…and a heartfelt contrition…regret… even something I wasn't quite sure of, some honesty I couldn't face right then. I admit, it turned me inside out and back to front and when he moved away, I could hardly breathe.

"Dean –"

He shook his head and stood up. "I gotta go, I just – just, uh, hold that thought, okay?"

Swallowing, I said, "Sure."

Inside out and back to front isn't an articulate place to be, I discovered, watching him walk out of the kitchen. My coffee was quite cold by the time I picked up the cup again and tried to drink it.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I didn't get a chance to talk to Sam until after dinner. The Trans had gone to bed, Lauren had gone to the apothecary, clutching a massive book under one arm and muttering something about toad juice and Sam and I were left in the library, him throwing himself into one of the club armchairs after he brought in a load of wood, and me reading through the days' print-outs from the autobots and trying to work out if a man who'd been arrested for indecent exposure after running naked through a park and climbing a tree, claiming to that he was being chased by a giant squirrel could be a case of witchcraft or if, more likely, it was the afternoon's hallucinogenics giving him a bad trip. I looked at the mug shot the paper had included with the story and decided that it was probably the latter. His pupils were blown and he was grinning somewhat fearfully at the police cameraman.

Running it through the shredder, I looked over at Sam, and got up, walking to the opposite chair and sitting down again. The fire was deliciously warm and my ass was cold for sitting on the hard, wooden chairs for so long.

"How're doing?" I asked him and he turned his head from his angry perusal of the flames to look at me.

"Dean tell you what happened? In Kearney?"

I nodded. "Some of it, what he could remember," I said.

His mouth thinned out. "You lied to me, Terry," he said coolly. "You told me he'd forgiven me. And he hadn't – you should've heard him. You should've seen him."

I looked at the fire for a moment, trying to decide the best way to get through this. "I didn't lie to you, Sam," I told him. "What that ghost or spectre or avenging spirit was trying to do, it had to work with what was there, and it tried to make it more than what it was." Looking up at him, I waved a hand vaguely in the direction of Kearney, or where I thought Kearney might be, relative to us. "You saw the other victims, Sam – a woman still stewing over a prom date from thirty years before? A guy blaming an umpire at a neighbourhood softball game? That ghost was hammering small feelings of dissatisfaction into big ones."

"Struck out with Dean, didn't it?" Sam frowned. "I didn't make all those choices to hurt him deliberately."

"No, you made them because you didn't believe in him at the time," I said, thinking that maybe this would be a good thing – eventually – for them because there was still some residual self-justification going on, on both sides. "And that was the leftover hurt that the spirit got him with, Sam."

"He's never believed in me, Terry."

The statement came out without Sam thinking about, a straight arrow from his heart. I couldn't believe he thought that.

"He's always believed in you, Sam," I contradicted him. "He always thought that of the two of you, you were the one who was stronger, who could do anything you wanted to do."

Snorting disbelievingly, Sam turned away. "How the hell do you figure that?"

"Don't you remember what he said in Indiana, Sam?" I asked him, softening my tone. "He was proud of you for standing up to your father, going your own way?"

"That was – that was a long time ago," he muttered. He ran a hand through his hair impatiently. "That was then, alright?"

"Sam…let's just get this straight, right here and right now," I said, feeling unaccountably tired all of a sudden. "Set aside all the filters of family you've been seeing him through and look at him as another person, one who has nothing to do with you."

I took a breath nervously. "You've been through that blame wringer on your own. Nothing he said to you was anything different to what you've said to yourself, was it?"

He didn't answer for a moment, then the tension seemed to seep out of him a bit. "No," he admitted unwillingly.

It's always easier to accuse yourself, than to hear your mistakes – or choices – thrown back at you from someone else. Especially if that someone else is so close that it feels like an attack even when they point out the minor rationalisations.

"What do you think is the most important thing to your brother?"

"Family," the answer came out instantly and he acknowledged that with a weary droop of his head. "I know, it's family. But that's the problem, Terry…he won't let go of that."

"He would," I told him, thinking it through slowly. "If he thought you were ready."

He shook his head. "No, he wouldn't. He's afraid of being alone."

I smiled suddenly at that thought. "You know, he's really not. He likes being alone, with his own company, better than he likes worrying about people being under his protection, worrying about what others are doing and thinking and feeling."

I thought of the episode where they had gone their separate ways for a while. In the fifth season, it'd been, right after he and Sam had gone to Colorado to help Ellen and Rufus with War. Dean had been talking to Castiel about working on his own. He said he'd been good, said he'd been happy.

"What he can't do, what tears him apart," I continued in that same, slow, thinking-it-through-as-I-went manner. "Is not be able to trust."

Huffing out a deep exhale, Sam shook his head. "I know that," he said. "He wouldn't let me make up for it."

I nodded agreement. "I know, but what you both keep doing is pretending it's fine when it's still a gaping hole."

"What am I supposed to do about that?" he asked me with an impatient hand wave. "I tried to get through – he walks away – or changes the subject – or pretends he didn't hear it –"

"If it was anyone else," I interrupted. "Anyone else that you cared about but didn't have a long history with – what would you do?"

He shot me a scowl and muttered, "I'd keep trying."

"Right," I said, wondering if I was getting somewhere. "You can't leave it all on him to make the moves, to make it right, to understand, Sam…you know, and I know you know, how many times he cut you a pass."

He went all tense and resistant again, hunched up in the chair. Even though those chairs were huge and just about swallowed me, still somehow it looked a bit too small for him.

Staring into the flames on the hearth, I waited for him to either argue or see the logic. I had seen his memories, when I'd been searching through his head to find him. I knew that he remembered all the times that Dean had let things go, from the asylum in Rockford when it had been Sam who'd been possessed by a ghost with incredible power, to the things Meg had said to him, when she'd been possessing him, things that we both knew Sam had felt, had thought of, but would never have said to his brother without some kind of poison to force it out.

"Terry…" he said quietly a few minutes later. "I look in his eyes, you know, and sometimes, all I see is disappointment. In the things I've done. In what's happened."

_Oh, Sammy_, I thought, feeling my throat close up. It was true and I couldn't argue against it. Dean _was_ disappointed, more in himself than in his brother, but disappointed nonetheless, for everything that had happened between them and the trust that wasn't there for him anymore.

"It's not that simple, Sam," I said, thinking about it. "He's – he is disappointed, of course, he's devastated that the trust he had in you, that he thought you had in each other, is gone. That's not the same thing as being disappointed in you."

"But he is," Sam insisted, leaning forward. "What he said, the way he looked at me, when that spectre had him…that's all I can hear or see now. He'd rather have Cas backing him up than me."

I looked at him. "You were the one who chose not to go," I reminded him.

"Because he wouldn't have relied on me – wouldn't have listened to me, even if I'd gone," he countered sharply. "You think I need that?"

"I think that if neither of you takes a step forward, there'll be a wall between you," I said, keeping my voice mild and matter-of-fact. "I think that you know how hard your brother tries to keep things good between you, even when it's hard for him, and you could do the same for him."

"I can't move anywhere if he won't listen to me," Sam said, his bottom lip curling down stubbornly.

That was true too. Really, the two of them had so many defence mechanisms in place between them it was a miracle they could even be in the same room.

"Sam –"

"Lauren told me that you doubt him too, Terry," he said abruptly, cutting me off. "You can't sit there and tell me you feel totally secure in what he's feeling, even if it's me or her that tells you."

Great, I thought, let's change the subject to me. I refrained from asking Sam where he'd learned that little tactic.

"No," I agreed truthfully, "I can't say that. But that's my problem, and it doesn't have anything to do with you and him."

"You're wrong," he said. "It has everything to do with it. He holds onto the past with a death grip, Terry. He says it's all good, sometimes he even means it, when he's saying it, but it's all still there, every scar and every cut, and he doesn't let it go."

I had a feeling he was probably right about that. It was something that the show writers had touched on, from time to time, but had only explored once, Dean's heart-felt wish to go back, not forward, when he'd been in the hands of the djinn. Even then, I'd thought, remembering the episode, he'd known that it wasn't possible, that he wasn't the same man under those circumstances. The writer hadn't let us see how that had felt, at the time.

From where I stood, it didn't make much difference. I didn't want to change him, didn't want him to change. I had to live with how he was. Sam too, had to face that at some point.

"He wants that trust back, Sam," I said. "You're right about him wanting to go back, you are, but like you, he can't move in any direction on his own."

I got up, thinking it would be better to leave him alone to think that over. Looking at the pile of print-outs on the table, I made an abrupt executive decision to leave them until morning. The missing yachts file was still there. I didn't know if either hunter had looked at it. I wondered if I should send it on to Bobby instead. Other than that, most of the world's news was a mix of bizarre accidents or straight-out human failings. I couldn't think about how Dean and Cas were doing with Crowley.

"I'll see you in the morning," I said to Sam, and he nodded, a bit morosely, his attention back on the fire.

Walking slowly back out through the library and heading for the stairs, I wondered a bit about Sam's assertion that Dean never let go of things. I wasn't completely sure that was true, at least not any more. What really held him was the sense of responsibility, I thought. Responsibility for Sam's choices. Responsibility for his own.

I had no particular doubts that if came down to the wire, no matter how he felt, he would cut loose what he had to in order to do his job. I tried real hard not to think about that too much.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Dean and Cas returned the following night. Both looked battered and exhausted.

"Where is it!?" Kevin said, striding through the library toward them. "What the – what did you do to it?!"

The tablet that Dean pulled out of his coat pocket was definitely not in mint condition. A jagged edge snagged on the pocket and he yanked it free, revealing that the stone was only half-a-stone. Kevin reached out and snatched it from him, eyes closing as a shudder rolled through him.

"I don't – this isn't –" he murmured, mostly to himself, I think. "Where's the –?"

His eyes flew open and he stared at Dean. "Where's the rest?"

"Crowley has it," Cas said. "I took the bigger piece when it broke."

"You broke it?"

"Well, I battling the King of Hell at the time," Cas said, looking to Dean for support.

"How'm I supposed to read this?"

"However you can," Dean snapped, tired of the conversation, I thought. He looked at me. "Anything to eat?"

"Roast, in the oven," Mrs Tran said before I could answer. "Come on, there's plenty."

She pushed her son ahead of her and Dean followed her. I got up, and Cas put a hand on my arm, looking from me to Lauren.

"You were right, something did happen to the Men of Letters order," he said, his voice rough with a very un-angelic weariness. "They stopped requesting information from us, stopped talking to Heaven completely. The records are – incomplete – on the matter, but there was a notation about a new Legacy, a man of great knowledge who arrived in this country at the same time and sought out the members."

I looked at Lauren, who shrugged. Sam was frowning.

"Cas, you alright?" he asked the angel.

"Crowley has grown in power," Cas said, not looking at him. "It was a difficult moment."

I could see Sam's doubts about that. I looked back at Cas and saw a flash of evasiveness in his expression, before it returned to his usual deadpan neutrality.

"I will keep looking," he said. "I had not realised but we lost contact with the other groups around that same time. There seem to be fewer now, not only here but across the world."

Turning to Sam, he said, "There's more, Sam. Crowley had an angel, captured and tortured. He is looking for the Angel tablet now."

"What happened to the angel?" Lauren asked, her voice worried.

"He found a way to bypass the vessel, to access the mind," Cas said, looking down. "I think that gave him the information he needed to begin his search. The angel died."

He disappeared with a snap, crackle and pop of invisible wings and displaced air and we looked at each other for a long moment, wondering how bad that was going to be, somewhere down the track.

"Let's eat," Sam said, getting up.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Apparently, reading half a tablet was a lot more taxing than reading a whole one.

Kevin seemed to go downhill fast, worrying his mother more than she already was. He wasn't sleeping and he ate only when a plate was put right in front of him, his eyes returning to focus on the world around him when the smells hit, I think.

"He's killing himself, reading this stuff," Mrs Tran hissed at me as we cleared the debris of his last meal. I couldn't disagree, he looked awful.

"Lauren's making up more of the herbal tonic," I started to say and she shook her head vehemently.

"Tonic, schmonic!" she said, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "He needs rest, needs eight hours solid sleep!"

"You said you didn't want to give him the –" I started to protest and she cut me off.

"I don't! I want him to rest naturally."

"He'll rest when the tablet lets him," Lauren said from behind us, coming into the room with a glass bottle and a shot glass. "It's not we who are driving him, Mrs Tran, he's the prophet, he is driven by what he needs to do."

She turned away with a sour look, returning to her desk and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Kevin?" Lauren said gently, walking around the big desk to him. "You need to take this, it'll help with the headache."

She poured a small amount in the glass and he took it, tossed it back and put the glass down in a single motion without his gaze ever leaving the stone, or his hand ceasing the endless scribbling across the pad next to it.

"What's that?" I asked in a low voice.

"Combination of things," she answered in the same low tones. "His blood pressure's too high, his heartrate too fast and he's burning out. The herbs will slow it down, without making him lose concentration. I'm hoping he won't notice."

We'd found him the second morning with a dime-sized spot of blood on the paper in front of him and Lauren had speculated that he might be having mini-strokes when he was right in the translations. It was not a pleasant thought and certainly not one we wanted Mrs Tran to dwell on. Since then, Lauren and Sam had been looking through all the books in the apothecary for solutions, potions and powders and tonics to ease the pressure on Kevin's body. He seemed a bit better, I'd thought. It was hard to tell.

"Come on," Lauren said, turning for the door. "I'll be back in an hour to make sure he eats something," she added, half to Mrs Tran who nodded without looking up from her typing.

In the kitchen, Dean and Sam were sitting on either side of the table, neither looking at the other.

"I'm hitting it," Dean said to the room at large, getting up. He looked down at the table and tapped the file sitting on it. "I'll be going tomorrow, you wanna come, fine. If not, fine."

Sam didn't respond and Dean turned away, looking at me and glancing toward the door. I nodded. The tension in the place was sky-high, between worrying about Kevin and Mrs Tran's lethal voltage looks, Charlie's complaints about non-existent power sources, the lack of decent bandwidth in te area and a lack of social life in the bunker, and Cas' news…I followed him out and up the stairs.

Dean slumped onto the bed as soon as we got into the room, and sat there, staring at the floor. I sat down beside him, putting my hand lightly on his shoulder and feeling the muscles there all knotted up and rigid.

"What's going on?" I asked him softly and he shook his head.

"Damned if I know."

I thought about talking about it, but decided against it. Talking works best if there isn't so much tension you could hold up a suspension bridge with it. Kicking off my shoes, I wriggled around on the bed behind him, and slid my hands around his chest, drawing off his shirt. For a second, he resisted, then he let go of it, sitting and waiting to see what I'd do next, I guess.

I eased his tee shirt over his head, hearing a long exhale as it came off. I'm not the world's best massager or anything, I just know what I like when I'm all stiff and tense and knotted up, and I did what felt right, rolling the heels of my hands against the hardness around his neck and shoulders, working up the back of his neck and into his hair in small, gentle circles. Bit by bit, he started to relax, started to take deeper breaths.

"Terry…" he said, twisting around to look at me, his eyes dark, the pupils dilated. "Uh…"

We spent a long time in a very slow, very thorough mutual inspection, an unscientific experimentation with no empirical results, just subjective ones. I was surprised to find several previously unthought-of places that brought reactions; a sharply indrawn breath, a fluttering of skin and muscle, a low, barely-heard moan that rumbled in his chest, and I memorised them for future considerations. I was more surprised that he found some new ones as well.

Running through it all was a very faint and almost indiscernible melancholia, which reminded me of the kiss I'd gotten before he'd gone with Cas. As soon as I made that connection, I looked at him, seeing that strange mix of emotions again in his face.

"Dean –"

He looked up and shook his head, leaning toward me to stop any possibility of a question – that might require an answer – that would certainly disrupt the effortless flow of what we were doing. I gave up my curiosity instantly and focussed my attention on him, a surge of heat and need wiping everything else out entirely.

I know I've mentioned that he's a very good kisser. It wasn't in technique though, because that changed from kiss to kiss, from moment to moment. I think, looking at it with as much objectivity as I can possibly muster considering the subject, it was a result of being completely honest. Have you kissed someone who just wanted and needed you? Not the sloppy, out-of-control kisses of teenage experimentation where pretty much everyone wants and needs it but has no idea of what they're doing, really, I mean, as an adult, with a load of experience under your belt (so to speak, ha ha), when it's full of the all possible emotions that the relationship has the potential for?

There was a sense of apology there, and I had an idea of what it was for. There was arousal, of course, getting deeper and deeper as the moments sped by. There was anticipation and an excruciatingly gentle tenderness that would've brought me to tears if the other emotions hadn't been there as well. It sounds horribly girly, I know, but that's what a really good lover does, you know, taps into all those things and makes every touch, every breath even, relate to the person they're with, talking without words, letting themselves out. Ah, philosophy at a time like this. Or do I mean metaphysicality? Is that even a word? Who knows? Who cares?

Every touch was like a confession, every look revealing something else – about him, about me – it was some seriously heavy stuff. With anyone else, it would have been too much, I think. Maybe even with him, it was too much, too close, so intimate I felt like I had no skin, no barriers or walls or defences, I felt like he could see all the way into me and all the way through. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. It made this part of the relationship important, so much more important than sex usually is.

When I could breathe again, and my heart was no longer galloping along like an out-of-control mustang, I rolled against him, enjoying the sight of him with his eyes closed, the lines and hollows and shadows smoothed out and gone. He only let me look for a moment, one eye opening and one brow rising in a tacit question.

"Did you talk to Sam?" I asked.

The huff of his exhale blew against my shoulder as he turned away. "I tried."

"He needs to know you're not disappointed in him, Dean," I persisted, thinking of the conversation I'd had with Sam. "Needs to hear it from you."

"I can't tell him that," he said, his voice quiet. "I can't."

"You know he –"

"I know," he said, his discomfort pricking at him and forcing him to shift up the bed. "I know he didn't mean it and he didn't think about it and he's sorry, okay? I know."

I thought he'd change the subject, or get up or do something to escape the conversation, but he didn't. He closed his eyes. "I can't tell him I'm okay with it, because it's not true. I'm not okay with it. I understand it, and I get his reasons, most of them, but I'm not okay."

Which was going to leave them stuck for a while, I thought sadly.

"Are you going to look at that case tomorrow?" I asked, giving up on the hope that one or the other might have been able to get them past their history.

"I – I don't know," he said. He rolled onto his shoulder to face me, as good a sign as any that he wanted to put the thought of his brother and the crevasse between to one side for the moment. "I think you might be right, but I can't find any leads on it, even the missing persons reports are too vague."

He lifted his hand, slipping it into my hair. "You want to get rid of me that fast?"

The lightening of his tone suggested that he didn't want to think about anything else tonight, and I thought that was fair enough.

"Yeah, I've got the pool guy coming tomorrow," I said facetiously.

"Pool guy? What's he got that I haven't?" he asked, jumping into the foolishness easily.

"Chlorine, a tan…" I replied airily. "Time."

"I got time," he told me, sliding down the pillows again. "I got loads of time."

Famous last words.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

We got downstairs late the next morning. Sam was pacing up and down the kitchen, Kevin was sitting at the table, eating and grinning at the same time, Mrs Tran was perched on a stool at the island counter, overseeing everything.

"What's going on?" Dean asked, slowing as we came through the door.

"Found it," Kevin said smugly through a mouthful of hash browns. "The way to close the gates."

"There're three trials…ordeals…tests," Sam said, stopping and turning to look at Dean. "They have to be completed and sealed with a spell before the contender can shut down Hell."

"Yeah?"

"The tablet says, '_Whosoever chooses to undertake these tasks should fear not danger, nor death, nor..._' um…" Kevin paused. "A word I think means getting your spine ripped out through your mouth for all eternity."

Dean blinked at him. I think I did too.

"The spell is a few words of Enochian, spoken after each trial is completed. Look, it's a contract, with God, I think. A binding one that delivers the power after the trials have been finished and the spell is finalised."

"Awesome," Dean remarked, heading for the coffee. "So what's the line-up?"

"I've only been able to find the details on the first one so far," Kevin said, mopping up his eggs with another hash brown. "It's gross. You have to kill a wolf of Hell and bathe in its blood."

Gross seemed accurate to me, although I can't say it seemed to be affecting Kevin's appetite at all.

"Okay," Dean said, pouring himself a cup and turning around.

"Okay!?" Sam asked, his forehead wrinkling up dramatically. "Okay?! Where are we gonna find a hellhound?"

Dean looked at him, one brow lifting. "Well, they collect on crossroads deals," he said, his voice reasonable. "We sift through the stories of the luckiest people on earth, we'll find one. We get between the schmuck and the dog, and slice and dice. Easy."

"Doesn't sound easy," Kevin commented under his breath. Sam shot him a look.

"It's not!"

"Let's get the searches running, and argue about it later, okay?" Dean suggested, putting his coffee on the table and heading for the stove. He looked over at me. "Usual?"

I nodded and walked across the kitchen to get myself a coffee. It didn't sound easy, but I knew that Dean was struggling with his own memories of hellhounds and he didn't need anyone – not me, or even Sam – reminding him about that. He needed to keep everything in terms of do-able or not do-able, without the fine print cluttering up his thinking.

Sam threw his hands in the air and turned on his heel, heading for the library with Lauren on his heels. Mrs Tran looked at me and I smiled blandly at her, hoping that I hadn't telegraphed all my thoughts to the room at large. Kevin kept eating.

"Kevin, you better take a few days' off," I suggested, looking at his mother. "Recharge the batteries before you look for the next one?"

"Good idea," Mrs Tran said immediately. "Charlie said that she's finished the basic design; she wanted to know if she could borrow Kevin for a day or so to review the structure for efficiency?"

"Up to Kevin," I said, glancing at Dean who looked up and shrugged. "This is going to take a while."

Kevin finished cleaning his plate without commenting, taking it to the sink, rinsing and sticking it and the cutlery into the dishwasher. I thought he was aware of his mama's eyes on his every move, but I applauded the training that he'd retained anyway.

He yawned as he closed the door, and I thought Charlie would have to wait until tomorrow to borrow his brain, it would be out of action until he'd caught up on all the sleep he'd missed out, with his mom guarding his bedroom door.

Dean set a plate in front of me, and I had to smother the smile that came automatically at his good Marine training as well. For all that the writers and the show itself had been ambivalent about John Winchester, the proof of the way he'd raised his boys, their honour and loyalty, being able to take care of themselves and anyone or anything around, and still be decent men, that was a legacy in itself.

"Good news, right?" he said, putting his plate down opposite and sitting down. "We can get started on this thing."

I focussed on my food, not sure how to answer that. It was a good thing, in some ways. It was a terrifying thing in others. I looked up at him, trying for a light tone.

"Guess I'll be calling the pool guy after all."

He gave me a look, tucking his food to one side of his mouth. "You think I'm gonna hesitate at the pool guy after I gut a hellhound, Ter?"

Seeing that fall flat – the reference to gutting was what did it, brought back the memory, fake but still vivid, of him being gutted by Lilith's hound the day his deal had come due - he stopped eating, and just looked at me. I couldn't return that look.

"Terry, this is what I do," he said, very quietly.

"I know."

"I'm good at it," he pressed a little harder.

"I know."

For a moment, there was silence in the kitchen, neither of us eating, or talking. Then he sighed and said, "I should have told you, what you mean to, uh, all that – the feelings, and crap."

I looked up then. He was looking at the kitchen wall, fingertips rubbing his temple.

"I can't – there's this – I did it once, and…" he trailed off, frowning at the wall.

"What you're saying is that someone else did the crime, and I have to do the time," I said, looking at him.

His head snapped around to stare at me, and I saw instantly that I was right. He'd opened his heart to Cassie, she'd laughed at him then called him nuts and then dumped him and that was all the aversion training he'd needed.

I nodded. "That'll have to do then."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

Bobby turned up the next morning, grumbling under his breath as he stomped down the iron stairs to the ops room.

"A way to close Hell? For good?" he barked at Dean.

"Good to see you too, Bobby?" Dean replied easily. "How you been?"

"What's the catch?" Bobby asked, ignoring that. "Who's gonna die?"

"No one's going to die," Sam said, a lot more certainly than I think he felt. "There are three trials that have to be completed and we've got the details on the first."

Looking from Sam to Dean, Bobby let out a long breath. "You know, it's always three trials – and then the kicker comes at the end."

"Yeah, well, closing Hell," Dean said, leaning back against the strategy table. "Worth whatever the cost."

Bobby's gaze slid over to me, his expression hidden by the shadow of his cap. "Is it, Dean?"

"We found a possibility for a crossroads deal, coming due in the next few weeks," Sam said hurriedly into the uncomfortable silence that had followed the old hunters question, waving a hand toward the library. "A family in Idaho, struck oil on their home place, even though the region isn't suitable, geologically speaking."

"Happened?"

"Ten years ago, next week," Dean answered, following them up the steps into the library, walking past me without looking over.

I thought of what Lauren had said. There was no question in Dean's mind that he would be doing the trials. Even Sam seemed to accept that without arguing about it. I walked up the steps slowly, listening to them vaguely as they argued about the timing, Bobby sitting down and going through the file on the family. It was a thick file. A lot had been public information, the finding of the oil, the family fortunes since then, their over-exposed lives in the papers, tabloids and internet. Only the youngest daughter had been hard to find much on. She lived in Paris and had a job as an assistant to a small gallery owner. No scandals, no marriages and divorces, unlike the rest of her family.

Pulling out a chair further up the table, I sat down in time to hear Sam complaining about the actuality of killing a hound.

"The Colt killed one in Carthage, but we have no idea where the hell it is now," he said, looking from Bobby to Kevin. "The tablet doesn't seem to have a table of contents or index, so we can't get the information from that –"

"Killing them's no problem," Bobby said, leaning back comfortably in the chair. "It's seeing them that's going to give you a headache."

"Right," Sam said, a bit taken aback. "Right, yeah, 'cause they're not visible."

"Unless you're the target," Dean said, his voice subdued. He was sitting beside Bobby, looking at the file. "You can't hear them either."

"I found something on that," Bobby said, getting up and walking to the far right corner. "Saw it last time I was here."

"You did?" The brothers said in perfect, astonished unison.

"Yeah, you can fix stuff so's you can eyeball them, uh…hell gates…hell hounds…yeah, here it is," he mumbled from the stacks, returning to the table with a huge, heavy book, bound in black leather. It shook the table when he dumped it on the surface and he flipped it open, searching through the pages with one hand while he pulled out a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket with the other. "Here, some fourteenth century monk wrote about a magician who found – hang on," he said, putting on the glasses. "There…_the dire creatures may only be seen by the damned or through an object scorched by holy fire_…" He stopped and looked at the brothers. "Thinking they're talking about holy oil fire here."

"Thinking you're right," Dean said. "I used up the last of the stuff Cas gave us on the circle for him."

"There's holy oil in the store-room," Lauren said from beside Sam. "Two dozen bottles."

"Well…that's handy," Dean remarked. "Okay, so an object scorched that we could look through…"

"Glasses," I said, a bit sharply. "Or goggles."

"Right," Bobby agreed, looking at the rest of the page. "_The hounds are large and ferocious_," he read. "_Cold iron can be used to kill them, but the implement must be razor keen and scorched along the cutting edge with the holy oil_."

"Pretty sure the angel swords will kill them too," Dean said. "They kill everything else."

Looking at him over his specs, Bobby hmphed. "What's the deal with the spell? Cas translate it for you?"

"Cas isn't answering at the moment," Sam said when Dean shrugged and looked away. "Heaven's a mess and Crowley got hold of one of their angels, found out about the Angel tablet."

"Balls," Bobby said tiredly. "So you two don't know what this spell does?"

"Completes the trial, let's us move on to the next one," Dean snapped. "What else do we need to know?"

"Well, reading the fine print might be an idea," Bobby said sourly.

"That's what I told them, but they won't listen," Lauren threw in, sending a pointed look at Dean.

"Look, Boy Genius over there says the first trial is to kill a hound and bathe in its blood," Dean argued. "That's it, there's nothing else. You read the spell, you move on."

"No, actually –" Kevin started to say.

"In any case, why're you even quibbling about this? This is it, the brass ring," Dean rolled over the top of Kevin's small interruption, raising his voice a little. "This is shutting down Hell. For good. What's the down-side?"

Nobody said anything, although I guess we were all thinking the same thing. For starters, the Bible's full of people God chose to do his little maintenance jobs for him, and not one of them had had a happy ending.

"You think this is your job, Dean?" Bobby asked quietly. "That it's the payback for being pulled outta Hell?"

Dean scowled at him and looked at the table top. "Doesn't matter. I'm doing it."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

On the top floor of the building, there was a window that overlooked the small ridge between the bunker and the town, tucked in between the bookshelves. At night, you could see the town's lights, spread out in a blanket against the darkness. Under the window frame, a cupboard made a good place to sit. I'd found it was a good place to think, without distractions or noise.

Dean found me there later that night.

"What are you doing up here?" he asked, as he came around the end of the stack. "I been looking everywhere for you."

I looked out at the town, twinkling against the black. "Just thinking. It's quiet here."

He stopped next to the window seat, sitting down at the opposite end. I had my legs drawn up, tight against my chest, my arms wrapped around them. It was a nice view but it could get cool up here.

"I have to do this," he said, his voice very deep and determined. I nodded, unsurprised at his choice of topic. That's all I'd been thinking about, here on my own.

"I know you do."

"It was my mom who started this, me and Sam who let the devil out –" he continued doggedly and I wondered if he was trying to convince me or himself. The argument, I thought, was specious anyway, he'd never been able to see the way it'd really happened for himself.

"You didn't start anything," I pointed out, turning my head to look at him. "Azazel was out and about long before your mother made the deal, Heaven and Hell conspired long before you were even born to join the family lines – their precious bloodlines – of the Winchesters and the Campbells, so that they'd have the keys to the seals – you and Sam put the devil back…so don't sit there and tell me that shutting Hell is on you and Sam because that's just a load of horse-puckey!"

My voice had risen during that little tirade and when I finished, he just sat there, staring at me.

"Sorry, but it is," I added, in a lower, slightly less hysterical tone. "But yes, this is the job and the life you chose, and you are a servant of God, and while I don't believe for a minute that it's the right payment for services rendered, I understand why you feel that way."

He was silent for several minutes, and I turned away again, leaning against the cold glass.

"Horse-puckey?"

I didn't dignify that with an answer. It was probably one of the very few times I'd actually managed to get out what I wanted to say in one clean sweep and I thought I pushed my luck on the articulation issue as it was.

"Terry…" he said, the lightness gone from his voice as he looked at me and moved closer. "It'll be alright, you know it will."

"No, I don't," I said, staring at the lights of the town. "But you were right. It doesn't matter. This is your choice."

"I can't walk away from this," he said defensively. "It might not be on me and Sam – you know, you're probably right about that – but this could make a difference to everyone, not just us. We could save a lot of lives, prevent a lot of lives from being ruined – you know that."

I did know it. Vicariously I'd seen a lot of people possessed, their lives torn apart, and then just killed. Even allowing for prime time blood-lust, those people had died in this world – or worse, had done things that made them wish they'd never lived.

"Don't get mad at me," he said softly. "Don't you do that. Please."

The ones you love, really love, they know how to break your heart in twenty-five words or less. I looked back at him.

"When do you and Sam leave?"

"Tomorrow," he said. "Bobby's coming with us. And don't change the subject. Terry, I have to do this, I don't have a choice, not really."

"This is who you are," I said, nodding as that connection came clearer than it ever had before, all the pieces I knew, even from the show, coalescing into a certainty.

"Yeah, this is who I am," he agreed, a little sadly. "It doesn't mean that I – you know, it doesn't change that I –" He ducked his head, rubbing his fingers hard against his forehead. "God, I don't know why I can't –"

"Maybe…" I interrupted him. "Maybe you can't make a promise you can't keep."

"Crap, that's worse, isn't it?" he asked me, his expression torn. "What – why – what the hell do you see, Terry, what do you see in me?"

Unfolding my legs, I let out my breath slowly. I saw a man who never gave up, a man who felt so deeply that he couldn't let go of anything, a man who thought he didn't deserve to have anything that he wanted, or needed, or loved. I saw a man who tried his best, every single minute of every single day to protect, to save, to put himself in between others and danger. I saw a man who carried wounds that no one should ever have to carry and who kept going in spite of them, maybe even because of them, worn down a little more each day with the load that kept getting heavier. I couldn't say any of that to him because it wasn't how he saw himself.

"Everything," I said instead. "Everything I ever wanted or looked for in anyone."

It was a broad, sweeping statement but it was also true. Loyalty, courage, honesty, integrity, his ethics were a joke but his morality was as serious as a heart attack. Compassion and humour and strength and an understanding, down deep, of himself, of what he could do and what he couldn't, of what he wanted, even when he couldn't admit that to himself – or anyone else. _Everything_.

He looked through the window, his throat working and I wished we'd been able to have this conversation some other time, earlier maybe. When he looked back, his expression was no longer vulnerable, but it wasn't hard, wasn't cold. In the odd light of the window's embrasure, I hazarded a guess at determined, maybe.

"Don't give up on me," he said, his eyes meeting mine straight on. "Don't write me off. Not until the box goes into the ground."

I made a face at the image and forced myself to say, "And not even then," as lightly as I could.

"Right," he said, moving closer. "Not even then."

My chest and throat were tight and full of tears, but I held them back and down, getting up with him to walk out of the room and down the stairs. I wasn't going to let anything out, I thought, until he wasn't around. I was surprising myself a little with my ability to keep it under control, to smile at his attempts to get me to smile, even laugh a little as we got back to the room and he asked about the lamp lying on the floor. I used to think that if you felt something, especially to do with someone else, then you should show it. I know now that there are times when you can't – and you shouldn't. I don't know if it made it easier for him, but I think it did and that was what really mattered.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

From Lebanon to Shoshone, where the Cassity family ranch was located, it was a fifteen-hour drive, and I knew that Dean would do it in one hit, he was so lit up with the need to get started on closing Hell down for good.

They left before dawn, and I pretended to be asleep when he got up and got dressed. I don't suppose I fooled him, what with the ability to tell that kind of stuff and all, but he didn't force it, just sat on the bed beside me and brushed his lips over mine then got up and left the room quietly.

I was determined not to think of all that could wrong. It seemed like bad luck to entertain those kinds of thoughts at a time like this. I also decided that it might be best if I avoided everyone else, since I seemed to be able to maintain my stiff upper lip a lot easier without the worried looks from Lauren, Charlie's curiosity and Mrs Tran's apparent belief that food, a wide variety and plenty of it, is the way to get through a crisis.

Instead, in a perverse and utter masochistic impulse, I took all the books I could find on hellhounds into the office, lit the fire and spent the first day reading about them. Do I have to tell you what my dreams were like that night? Nah, I didn't think so.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Lauren came into the office the next morning, took one look at the bags and dark purple shadows under my eyes and shook her head.

"Sam called, last night," she said, without preamble, setting a cup of coffee and a plate of toast on the small table next to the armchair. "They missed the hellhound."

I looked up at her questioningly and she plonked herself down in the chair on the other side of the hearth.

"He thinks that more than one deal was made there," she continued, waving a hand toward the toast. I picked up a piece obediently and started to eat it. "So they're staying on to see if another one turns up."

"Dean wanted to talk to you last night," she added after a moment, looking sternly at me. "I couldn't find you."

I nodded and kept eating. I'd gone up to the top floor after reading all the accounts of the hellhound lore, my stomach churning away like an industrial washing machine. Those dogs were something. I should've grabbed something light and fluffy to read afterwards, but the library here didn't really do so much of the light and fluffy. I'd made a mental note to get some easy reading materials on the next trip to town.

"How's Sam doing with the Kearney fallout?" I asked, deciding the focus had been on me for long enough.

Lauren sighed. "I don't know," she admitted. "We've talked about it – about it, over it, under it and around it…I think that it's a mess, he's gotten everything he's done tangled up with his memories and none of it makes much sense when he tries to explain it to me."

I frowned and stopped chewing. "You know, Lauren, it really _doesn't_ make any sense," I said, thinking back. "Dean and Sam have been through this, you know? They – uh – they took down a minor god, two or three years ago."

I tried to remember the details of that conversation, tried to remember that it could've been the writer's imagination, not a bona-fide event here. "Dean told Sam he was sorry for riding him so hard," I said, biting my lip as the scene slowly returned to me. "That he'd broken the first Seal anyway so he wasn't a blameless bystander to everything that'd happened."

"What did Sam say?" She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, looking at me intently.

"He said that they had to, um, stop angsting over the might-have-beens and go down fighting. But they had to do it as equals," I told her. "In the season, it was a turning point. For awhile at least. At the end, when Sam told Dean he was going to try and hold Lucifer and take him back to the cage, Dean realised that it was Sam's choice and that he had to let go of trying to protecting him and back him up."

Lauren frowned. "That sounds…sensible."

I smiled reluctantly. "Yeah."

"So what turned that around again?" she asked, leaning back in the chair and staring at me. "Why the return of those feelings now? You think it didn't take, somehow?"

"No." I shook my head firmly. "No, it definitely took. They were clear about what they were doing, and why they were doing it."

"You know, what year was this?" she asked, getting up and going to the laptop on the big desk.

"Uh, well it was supposed to be May, in 2010," I said, struggling to remember all the timing discrepancies that had gone on from there. "I think it was actually September, though, because Dean told me that he and Sam spent more than three months apart after they took down War."

"2010," she repeated, sitting down and opening the computer, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she brought up a search engine.

"What?"

"Look," she said and I got up and walked around the desk to look over her shoulder at the screen.

"I was reading through some of the files dealing in prophecies, last week," she said, typing in a file number and hitting Enter. A new screen popped up, the order's digitalised file filling it. "Some seer at the turn of the last century prophesised that in the tenth year after the turn of the millennium, the Devil would be bound forever and peace would come to the Earth," she said, scrolling down the file's contents.

"There, read that," she told me, zooming in on the relevant section.

I read it. "_'The Tainted One took the Devil back to the depths of Hell and held him there for a thousand years. And over the Earth, peace descended, all men living in harmony and freedom.'_ Sounds like wishful thinking to me," I added, wrinkling my nose at the screen.

"With the demon blood, Sam would've been seen as the Tainted One, don't you think?" she asked me, her nails tapping a furious staccato pattern against the table top. "But he wasn't held for a thousand years, he was raised from the Pit by Cas."

I looked at her. "Without his soul."

"That doesn't matter, at least I don't think it does," she said, her expression drawn. "And Dean made the deal with Death to restore Sam's soul."

"And?"

"And what if that wasn't supposed to happen?" she asked me, a shiver shaking her shoulders. "What if that changed something, reset something?"

"How certain are you that the prophecy was accurate?" I asked, looking back at the file.

"I'm not certain at all," she admitted readily. "But Terry, everything that happened since then, Cas' deal with Crowley, and you being brought here, and the opening of Purgatory, you told me that it seemed like the writers in your world weren't seeing things as clearly as they had been?"

"Well," I hedged uncomfortably. "Even in the early episodes, there was a lot of inaccuracy. Things that they put in for the audience, or because they didn't see it properly or thought their version of events was better."

"But not like it's been happening lately, right?" she pressed.

I thought about it. Both Dean and Sam had been shocked to find that what I'd seen had been so accurate. Little things had been different, but not the major ones. In the last couple of seasons, that wasn't the case.

"I don't know," I said uneasily. "Cas said that the lines of destiny were being changed because I'm not from here."

She shook her head. "One soul, even from another dimension, doesn't have that sort of power." She looked up at me. "This level of change, this is something that only a very few could pull off, the multi-dimensional entities, the highest of the ranked angels…" she stopped, her eyes losing focus as a thought hit her. "There was one angel who could change the lines of destiny, just by writing something different."

"Who?"

"Metatron," she said, frowning. "Come on, we need to find out what the order has on the Scribe of God."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The order didn't have much.

"So, this angel –" I started, looking back over the notes I'd made.

"Archangel," Lauren corrected me absently.

"Archangel," I said. "He wrote the tablets we're chasing, and he was God's mouthpiece, is that right?"

"Yes, and much more," she said, closing the book she'd been skimming through and pick up another. "He sat at God's feet and he liaised with the archangels and with humanity, sometimes. He guided those who Fell deliberately, to teach people of the knowledge of the world they lived on, of the stars and the oceans and the seasons. He was the most trusted of all the angels in Heaven."

"So, um…why would he be messing with destiny now?"

"I don't know," Lauren said worriedly. "He disappeared from Heaven over a thousand years ago, and the angels searched for him everywhere but they couldn't find him. He had the power, but I can't see a motivation."

"When you say he had the power…what do you mean?" I asked her.

"He wrote with God's power," she answered, a bit distractedly, I thought. "He couldn't move mountains or part seas, but he could undo any ward or sigil – erase them." She rubbed a fingertip along her brow, as if that might force the memories of what she'd been told back. "He could write an event, like a story, and it would come to pass."

"I can't see a motivation for screwing around with Dean and Sam, in that case," I said tiredly. "They'd put Lucifer back. Things should've gone back to normal."

She snorted. "Whatever you think that is," she said. "I can't see it either."

"Do we tell them about this?" I asked her, wondering what the point would be.

"No," she said. "Not yet, at least. I don't know if we're reaching for something that isn't there, or if something else is at work. I know Crowley has gained in power and I can't think how that could be. Castiel can't keep track of the different factions that have formed in Heaven. The half a tablet we do have isn't clear – and I think that's deliberate, in fact I have a very bad feeling that vital information about this quest has been obscured deliberately, to set a contract in place without all the details."

I thought about that. "Would God be that mean?"

"I don't think God worded those tablets, Terry," Lauren said, closing the book on her lap and putting it with the rest. "I don't know why Metatron would have done it, but no one else had the same access to that information and he wrote them."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Well, between worrying about what was happening in Idaho, worrying about the lack of detail on the trials on the tablet, worrying about why an archangel would want to re-write history and worrying about the possibility that what the brothers had been through and resolved between them had somehow been undone by said archangel in that process, I got very little sleep when I finally got to bed.

Sam had called again, this time to tell us that they'd missed a second hellhound, or maybe it was the first still hanging around, who'd taken Margot, the youngest of the Cassity daughters earlier that night. Dean had seen the creature, through the pair of glasses they'd made before they'd left, and they were positive that another of the family had made a deal but they couldn't work out which one it was. He'd told Lauren that the family was like the Ewings without their class.

He was worried about Dean, he told her. Worried about the recklessness he could sense in him. Dean had told him, on the drive up, that he wasn't disappointed in him, but from what Lauren told me later, he didn't really believe his brother. Sam said that Dean had made some speech about just being a grunt and Sam being able to live his life with a real purpose, and that scared the crap out of me, even in its third-hand delivery. It also made me wonder if whoever was behind the changes in the lines of destiny was still making adjustments, still trying to force the story to some other place.

One memory that resurfaced was when Balthazar had changed the lines by unsinking the Titanic. It nagged at me that that act had affected everyone – except me. I'd remembered the previous time-line. I'd remembered what had really happened. No one else had. If I'd been brought here deliberately, by the Scribe, surely that wouldn't have happened?

Cas had said that for good or bad, my being here was changing things. Was it also changing the new stories? I couldn't decide how I could possibly find that out.

All in all, it looked like being one of those impossible puzzles and my dreams had been filled with what-ifs and maybes and memories all tangled up together of my other life, this one and the show's version of events, none of which reached any kind of resolution. I woke up a couple of times, sweating and crying with my head pounding and my heart rattling in my chest, and finally I gave up and had a shower and went downstairs to the office, pulling out the next volume of the Apprentice Training books and trying to escape from the present in the exercises of a beginner Legacy.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Sam and Bobby carried Dean into the bunker, neither of them looking much better.

"Downstairs," Lauren snapped at them, taking in the injuries in a single glance. "Did you clean it properly?"

I saw what she was talking about as they carried him past, a thick, soaked bandage around his abdomen.

"Yeah, it's clean," Bobby grunted.

Following along behind them, I kept all my questions, worries and rising level of hysteria locked down in my throat and went to the kitchen to boil some water. My teeth started chattering as I carried the big pot carefully down the stairs, and the sight of Bobby, leaning against the wall outside the apothecary didn't make me feel any better.

"Terry, can you check Sam?" Lauren said to me as I came in. "Mrs Tran is going to look Bobby over."

All organised, I thought, setting the pot down and turning to Sam who was sitting on a stool against the long sink counter. He was bruised, down the side of his face and as he took off his shirt and tee, I could see the darkness from collarbone down to the bottom of his ribcage. I got the Numbing Lotion #2 from the cupboard and started to spread it carefully over the bruises.

"What happened?" I asked him, when he started to relax.

"He didn't find out who'd made the third deal until the hellhound was already there," he said, flinching away a little as I must have pressed too hard. "He got sideswiped and lost the glasses, and…well, it ended up me being the one who killed it."

Lauren stiffened instantly at his words and I glanced over at her worriedly. "You?"

Sam nodded, looking at Lauren's rigid back apologetically. "I didn't mean it – I didn't think…I was just trying to keep it off Dean."

"You did the spell?" I asked, smoothing another handful of lotion over his ribs.

"Yeah," he said, a bit hesitantly. "Something happened, but I don't know what it was."

"Describe it," Lauren bit out, throwing the remains of Dean's tee shirt and the bandages that had covered his wounds into the trash can beside her.

"There was, um, a heat, in my hand," Sam said, eyes half-closing as he looked back at the memory. "For a second, I thought my arm was going to burn off. Then it disappeared and that was it."

"Was there a light?" Kevin asked, from the doorway. "Could you see a light?"

Sam nodded unwillingly, flicking another glance at Lauren's back.

"That's the contract," Kevin said to no one in particular. "The tablet said that the contract would commence with the first trial being finished successfully, that it would show in a burning light."

Mrs Tran came in behind her son, holding clean clothing. She passed Sam a tee shirt and button down shirt without comment, taking his blood-stained clothes from him. She left the rest for Dean.

The lotion had disappeared into Sam's skin and I could see the bruises lightening, the colours turning from black and blue to green and yellow. It was some amazing stuff. Sam pulled on his clean tee shirt carefully.

"It looked like the claws went right into him," he said to Lauren.

"They did," she said tersely. She'd been sluicing out the holes and cuts with a saline mix and as she spoke, she reached for a bottle of clear alcohol. "It looks clean enough. Terry, could you find a bottle that's labelled Healing Paste #1, it's in the same cupboard as the numbing lotion."

I walked over to the cupboard, returning the lotion and finding a big, squat jar of green cream easily.

"Put the gloves on and when I've finished drying this, pack the whole area with that, thickly."

I nodded, and pulled a pair of surgical gloves from the box on the table. "Did it go through to his organs?"

"I don't know," she said, using a clean swab to dry his skin. "There's no internal bleeding that I can see, no pooling under the skin, his blood pressure's good," she added, glancing at me. "So that's a very good sign."

Throwing the swab in the trash, she nodded to me and I scooped out a massive amount of cream and started to pack it into the holes in Dean's side. The claws had punched in, just below his ribs and then dragged downwards, leaving an open mess of torn tissue. Lauren didn't appear to even think of trying to stitch the edges back together and I could understand that, they were ragged and ripped. I hoped that the Healing Paste #1 was as efficacious as the numbing lotion was.

"So," Lauren said, turning to Sam as she pulled off her gloves and tossed them in the trash. "You're doing these trials?"

I winced as I heard the raw tone underlying the question.

Sam must have decided that the conversation was going to be a bad one for them as well, because he took her arm and pushed her toward the door. She resisted for a moment, then turned back to me.

"Terry, as soon as that's all packed full, put a gauze dressing over the top and wrap it," she said. "Not too tight, just enough to keep it in place."

I nodded again, feeling my stomach clench a little bit. Horrendous Injuries 101, I thought, smoothing another layer of cream into the deep crevasses of the drag marks. It wasn't something I'd really thought about when I'd made the decision to stay here for good.

The cream was sticky and it stayed where it was put, which helped a lot. I spread it out some distance from the actual wounds as well, and used nearly half the jar on him, hoping that more was better. When I'd coated the injuries completely, I put the jar down, pulled off the gloves and put on a new set and laid layers of fine gauze over the top.

"Hey."

I looked up from his stomach to see Dean watching me, his eyes barely open, but still showing a glint of green.

"Don't I get a kiss for coming back in one piece?" he asked, his voice cracking but the tone light.

I swallowed and felt my face screw up a bit. "I don't want to hurt you," I said, gesturing at the half-dressed wounds, the bruises on his shoulders and face.

"Too late," he said, with a surprisingly gooey kind of grin. "I've had worse," he added more matter-of-factly, wincing a bit as he forced himself into a sitting position.

I watched the gauze anxiously and looked back at him when it didn't appear to move at all. "Let me put the bandage on," I said, reaching for the long roll. "Just to make sure it all stays together."

"Sam tell you about the hellhound?" he asked as I started unrolling the bandage around his middle.

"Yeah," I said. I still wasn't sure of what I thought of that, beyond a sneaking and not-closely-looked-at sense of relief that whatever was demanded in the trials, it wouldn't be Dean doing them. I felt guilty about that feeling. I didn't want anything to happen to Sam either.

"I tried to talk him out of it," he said, looking down to watch me as I came to the end of the roll and clipped it into place with a couple of elastic closures. "He wouldn't listen."

I looked up at him as he slumped a little, the bandage firm but not tight around his stomach. It was, I thought with a shiver that ran up my spine, a re-write of what he'd had to accept when Sam had suggested he take the devil back. He could face anything for himself. Facing his brother's life at risk was much harder.

"Kevin hasn't figured out the second trial yet," I said, a little off-track, but I wasn't ready to ask him about the recklessness Sam had seen in him. Or how he felt about having to be the second-string on closing the gates.

"Why didn't you ask me not to do it?" he asked suddenly, lifting his head to look at me.

The question startled me, being more off-track than mine was. "I didn't have the right to ask that –"

"You're the only one who had that right," he cut me off.

"No." I shook my head. "Your life, Dean, your choices. I can't ask you to do something because it's what I want."

He frowned at that, his eyes darkening with the shadow of his lashes over them, and I let out my breath.

"Whatever is between us, whatever you feel…it has to come from you," I said, more than a bit surprised that I'd managed to say it clearly. "From what you want, not from me telling you what I want."

I thought he was going to say something about that, but he didn't. Instead he eased himself off the metal table and looked down at his jeans which were stiff with dried blood. I passed him the clothing Mrs Tran had brought in and he changed slowly and carefully.

"I should put some stuff on that bruising," I said, looking at his back.

"Mmm-hmm."

I got the lotion from the cupboard and scooped it out of the jar. He stopped moving as I smoothed the thick blue goo across his shoulders, leaning against the table. I focussed on the colours. It looked like he'd been thrown into a wall, one with something sticking out of it, I thought as I felt the swelling over his right shoulder blade. "What'd you hit?"

Glancing over his shoulder at me, he shrugged. "The wall. Had a hook or something in it. I dropped the sword, couldn't hang onto it, must have hit a nerve cluster there."

I kept going with the goo, trying not to visualise that scenario in my head.

"Sam thinks – he thought I wanted to die to get Hell closed," he said after a moment's silence. "Half the time, it's like he doesn't know me at all."

The thought of the scribe popped into my head and I wondered if that could be the reason for what Dean'd thought he and Sam had settled rearing up again. Or it could be, I considered, that after years of looking at Dean as his big brother, in that tightly-fitting shell, Sam was slowly becoming aware of him as a person. A man who he didn't know as well as he thought. Did that work both ways? I thought not. Dean was, maybe because he'd been forced into a partial parenting role, aware of Sam in a different way.

"He wants to know you," I reminded him gently. "You were - are - more than just a brother, Dean, and it's hard to see family clearly, even without everything that's happened to you both."

I'd covered all the black and blue spots and I lifted my hand. He stood up straight, cautiously then with more confidence as the pain dissipated and turned around.

"Yeah, it is," he agreed, and I thought he was thinking of his father right then. He seemed to put it aside, picking up his tee shirt and pulling it over his head. I watched him critically, looking for any signs that he was hiding his pain. It didn't seem like it.

"It's sore," he told me as he pulled on the shirt, the corner of his mouth lifting. "But nothing like what it was."

"Good."

"Do I get my kiss now?" he asked casually and I put the jar down, smiling and taking a step closer to him.

"Why not?"

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Two days later, Bobby looked up from a stack of satellite photos, announcing with a definite satisfaction, "It's not a sea-monster."

Sam looked over at him, brow creasing up. "What is it?"

"Pirates," Bobby said, pushing the stack across the table to him. "See for yourself."

I leaned across the table to look at the pictures upside-down. Bobby was right.

It'd been Charlie's suggestion to tap into the low-altitude military satellites that kept an eye over the continent twenty-four-seven and she and Kevin had devised a couple of programs to upload to them and convince the satellites to send their images down to us, as well as NASA or NORAD or whoever they habitually downloaded to. The photographs, taken over the last year showed the pattern clearly. Boats, expensive motor or sailing yachts, left Seattle, or San Francisco or Vancouver on schedule. About two hundred miles off the coast, another boat would turn up, coming alongside. They remained there for an hour or two, then there was an explosion, or the boat just started sinking and an hour later there was nothing left to see.

The images weren't detailed enough to see the actual attacks but it seemed obvious what was happening.

"So, just people?" Dean asked, half-sprawled in his chair. The creams of the order had accelerated his healing incredibly, the holes and gouges in his stomach now nearly filled in and scabbed over, just a light dressing over them to stop him from scratching at the irritating itches of his new-growing skin and keep any seepage tidy.

I frowned at him. "People are still dying."

"Yeah, but…" He looked across at his brother. "Nothing we do about the evil in the human race, right, Sam?"

Sam didn't look up. "Did Kevin say if he was able to get a better resolution on these?"

Lauren shook her head. "He was going to try, he said he thought that he could get bit a more out but not much."

"Why?" Dean asked.

"This looks weird," Sam said, holding a magnifying glass over one of the images. He pushed the photograph and glass across the table to his brother.

Picking them up, Dean tilted the picture to the light and brought the glass slowly back from the surface of the image. I saw him tense a little.

"What?"

"You're right," he said to Sam. "It does look weird."

"What are you talking about?" Bobby asked, waving a hand for the photo and glass.

Dean passed them over. "The way they're standing, Bobby."

Bobby stared at the image for several minutes, then he looked up at Dean with a bitter expression on his face. "Like they're feeding."

Dean nodded. "I'll go see if Kevin's gotten any clearer ones."

He got up and walked out and Sam ran his hands through his hair. "Vamps, right?"

"That was my impression," Bobby said tiredly. I got up and walked to the seat next to him, sitting down and picking up both photo and glass. The image itself was a bird's view, obviously, looking from above the two vessels that were tied together in the middle of the sea. There were six or seven people on the larger boat. One of them was leaning over another one, forcing them back onto the cabin's top. Under the greater magnification, it looked like they were…well, doing something to the other person's neck. Since it didn't seem all that likely that it was a make-out session, that really only left one other possibility.

"Can you back track the pirate boat's point of origin using these?" I asked Bobby and he nodded, getting up and heading for the elevator. Charlie could get those images.

"So it was a case," Lauren said quietly, looking from me to Sam. "There are a lot of them there, Sam."

"Yeah," he agreed, glancing through the other photos. "Probably more at whatever they're using for a base."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

That night, I looked around the bedroom with what was probably a misplaced sense of contentment. It was a home like no other I'd ever had. I thought that Dean felt the same way, although he hadn't said anything.

He'd brought up a pile of his stuff, from deep within the trunk of the Impala. On one wall, surrounding the desk, weapons of all types were hanging, neatly arranged with the precision of those flying ducks that used to be popular in a certain kind of home, but with a far greater sense of style, not to mention macabre overtones. He'd dug up an old gramophone from somewhere in the building and it sat on the bureau, along with a couple of dozen vinyl albums from the seventies and early eighties, all straight and mostly unscratched, a feat of care I still couldn't believe.

I'd found some old wooden photograph frames and there was a small collection of his family's photos, from the box that Jenny had found in the basement of their old house in Lawrence, from his father's journal, even a tiny one of him and his mother that his father had given him and that had survived at least ten wallet changes, creased and a bit grubby but clear enough to see the love Mary had for her son.

Looking at them, it was absolutely obvious that the family had been happy, at least for a short time. Even the later picture, one Bobby had taken, of John with Dean and Sam, sitting on the hood of the Impala, didn't give the impression that their childhoods had been one unending series of horror and pain. Kids were adaptable, I thought, looking at the boys' expressions more closely. I was a testament to that.

Under the glow of the lamp-light in the room, the juxtaposition of his stuff and mine seemed complimentary. The desk and nightstands had piles of the order's books on them. My framed photograph of my family sat in the midst of his. It wasn't pristine or fancy or anything like a designer room. It looked lived in.

I sat down on the bed and picked up the brush, wondering absently if I should cut my hair again when he came in, scowling slightly, that expression clearing as he looked at me.

"What's wrong?" I asked, feeling like I should have it tattooed on my forehead, I asked him that so much.

"Nothing," he said, kicking his boots across the room and dragging his coat off. "Not nothing," he amended almost immediately, getting up and pulling off socks and shirt.

"Charlie got a location, Prentiss Island," he continued, shedding his clothes as he talked and moving closer to the bathroom. "We're going tomorrow."

I'd been expecting that. "Is Bobby going with you?"

He nodded. "Says we need more'n two to take on a nest that size," he elaborated over his shoulder as he walked into the bathroom in his boxers and socks.

"He's right," I said, but not so loudly as he'd hear me over the water running.

"What?"

"Nothing!" I said, getting up and wandering around the room, picking up his clothes. It was a waste of my time, since it happened at least once a day, sometimes more, but it was becoming a habit. I dumped them in the hamper beside the door and walked back to the bed. I was glad Bobby was going along, one more hostage to fortune, but safety in numbers too…all the clichés were playing tonight.

Lauren and I had raised our suspicions about the archangel, Metatron, over dinner the night before. It was thin, we were the first to admit it, but neither of us felt comfortable withholding anything that might have even the smallest possibility of getting the brothers to look at their current stalemate from a different angle. I wasn't sure if either man had taken a step back and looked at the feelings more objectively, but I couldn't do anything about that. You know, you can lead a horse to water…

The shower went off and I heard the rattle of the curtain rings. A new record for speed, I thought, flopping back on the bed. Dean wandered out, a towel wrapped around his hips and his hair sticking out in every direction, his gaze on the floor.

"Where're my clothes?"

"In the hamper," I told him. "They were nearly walking around by themselves."

He snorted, dripping water as he walked to the bureau. There was maybe a thirty second pause as he looked at the photos arranged there. He did it every time. Then the drawers squeaked open and he was rummaging around.

"Are you going out?" I asked.

"No, I…" he started to say, then shrugged, pulling the towel off and finishing drying himself. "I was going to do some reading," he said, tossing the towel onto the floor behind him. I sighed and he grinned, turning around and grabbing it, walking back to the bathroom to hang it up. "I can read tomorrow," he said, coming out again.

"Something more interesting to do?"

"Huh," he agreed, leaning over me and smiling his over-the-top suggestive smile. "Way more interesting."

The playfulness was short-lived. It always was. I once read a fan fiction story, back in my old life, that had speculated that Dean took sex seriously, even reverently, because it was the only means he had of feeling close to someone, an intimacy that went a long way beyond the physical and gave him an emotional release that he couldn't find any other way. I'd asked him about it, a while ago, wondering if that was true. He hadn't thought about it before, but he'd agreed it was a possibility. He savoured the moments, letting them draw out and out until what he was doing was nearly unbearable. He liked that for himself too, slow caresses that reached deep, a loving attention to detail, kisses that lasted three days. He kept his eyes open most of the time and I could feel him watching my reactions, his arousal amping up when I moaned or shivered or arched up to his touch.

I'd begun to do the same, feeling a surge of heat when I saw him respond – a sucked-in breath, an involuntary tremble, his eyelids fluttering closed and open again, or widening, the pupils dilating. It was like some closed circuit of sensation, feeding back and forth between us. The more he was turned on, the more I was. I have to say, I hadn't really thought about it before I'd met him, but it worked incredibly well. Like I'd told him before, the way it was with him made my previous experiences look like a yawn-fest.

"Fuck, that was…" he murmured against my neck.

"Yeah, it was," I agreed, my arms closing more tightly around him. "Definitely."

For a little while, we stayed like that, wrapped around each other and just being as the after-effects gradually worked their way out of our bodies. It was warm and comforting, I thought, a whole new level of comfortable that I slowly coming to understand was a very addictive state. I should've known it couldn't last.

It took me a couple of minutes to even realise that something was wrong, when he unwound himself and moved away.

"What's wrong?" Again with the darned question.

"Nothing," he said, and this time, he sounded sharp.

"Dean."

He was sitting up on the edge of the bed and he looked back over his shoulder at me. "How'd you do this?"

"Do what?" I asked, nonplussed at the question, but even more so by his tone, which was…irritated, I thought.

"Get into me so deep," he said accusingly. It sounded accusing, like it was something I'd planned and schemed to do to him. I stared at him in total non-comprehension.

"What?"

"How'm I supposed to keep Sam safe if I can't concentrate on what we have to do?" he asked, and that question made even less sense than the previous one, at least to me. I didn't say anything – I mean, how many times you can keep saying 'what!?' to someone?

"I have to be clear," he said, standing up and walking around the bed, his shoulders hunched up somewhere around his ears. "I have to have my fucking priorities straight."

"Dean, what did I do wrong?"

He leaned against the bureau, staring at the pictures that covered the top. "Nothing, you didn't do anything wrong," he said, but his voice was harsh and deep and it sent a shiver right through me. "I'm the one who fucked up."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

* * *

"You're not making sense."

"Fuck, I know," he said, and his shoulders slumped down along with the exhale he let out. "I shouldn't have done this," he added, much more quietly.

"Done what?" I sat up and looked at him. "This? Us? That's what you're regretting now? After – after everything that we've been through?"

It wasn't him, I thought a bit wildly. It couldn't be. But it sure as heck sounded like him, sounded like some misguided guilt trip he'd taken himself on.

"It was a mistake," he said, straightening up and turning to look at me. "Mine. Sam needs me to be focussed – to watch his back."

"Yeah, I get that –"

He cut me off. "So, right now, most of the time, I'm not focussed on him, not focussed on the job," he said, the sharpness returning to his tone. "I'm thinking about things I have no business thinking about."

At that, I started to feel angry. Finally, I can hear you mutter. Yeah, well, surprise does that to you.

"I'm distracting you, Dean?" I asked him, wincing inwardly at the way my voice had risen to a new, higher pitch with the question. I looked around the room, wondering how I could have been so darned dumb as to think this was going to be a home.

"I'm not trying to hurt you –" he started to say, and swung away, his eyes closing.

"You're not? What a relief!" I snapped, ignoring the way he looked, focussed on what he was saying instead. Females. I tell ya. "Because I'd hate to think what I'd feel like if you were trying."

I got off the bed, snatching up my robe and pulling it on, wondering where the hell I could go for the rest of the night. It was inconsiderate to have a fight in the middle of the night, I thought, not looking at what he was saying, preferring to relegate the argument to one of relationship etiquette.

"I'll go, you can stay here," he said, not looking at me as he began to pull clean clothes from the bureau.

"Why would I want to stay here?" I said waspishly to him, and it was right then that I felt something wrong. I mean, wrong apart from what was going horrendously wrong in the room between us, that is. It was really weird, but I kind of stepped right away from everything for a split-second, as if I'd just taken a giant stride off the world.

How had we gone from being so close, physically and emotionally, a moment ago to this, I wondered in that weird clarity when I didn't feel like I existed anywhere. How had that happened?

I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that Dean had not been feeling any doubts whatsoever five minutes before – or an hour – or a day. He'd been aware that I was worried about him, about the trials and all that meant, about what the hellhound had done to him, all of that stuff, but we'd been past that, I thought. He'd never mentioned or even implied by look or anything that he was worried that he needed to protect his brother without distractions.

The out-of-the-world clarity vanished and I stood in our room, staring at him as he leaned on the end of the bed, his shoulders tense and the muscles visibly knotted up.

"Dean –"

"I can't," he said, lurching to one side as if he was feeling a pain in his head, his gaze on the floor. He reached out for the door handle and pulled the door open, his head bowed as he staggered through it.

"I can't risk losing Sam, Terry," he said as he drew the door close to him. "I don't love you, not the same way you love me, and I never will."

He stepped aside and pulled the door shut, like a kind of exclamation point to his words. My nanosecond of clarity memory vanished under those words and I sat down on the bed staring at the door for a few minutes as they sank in.

The feeling of wrongness persisted, however.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

They were gone in the morning, and I walked downstairs in a numb haze, not really sure that everything that had happened last night had really occurred. I mean, I'd been having nightmares, maybe I'd had one and in it Dean had said the thing I least wanted to hear and had left? It was possible. I didn't think that's what'd happened, but I did try to keep the thought that it was a possibility at the forefront of my mind.

Lauren took one look at my face and poured me a coffee, setting it down on the kitchen table in front of me and pushing me down into a chair.

"What happened?"

"I don't know," I said. "I think Dean dumped me last night."

"You think?" she asked doubtfully.

I sipped the hot black coffee and tried to sort out the memories into something resembling order.

"Everything was fine, then he suddenly started saying that he couldn't protect Sam, that he couldn't prioritise with me around," I remembered. "Then he said didn't love me, the same way I love him, and he never would."

I frowned at that, the contradiction in the conversation coming back to me. "Actually, he seemed to be saying that he wasn't thinking of Sam as much as he was thinking of our relationship at first, but then it changed around."

"That's…peculiar," Lauren ventured, frowning as well.

The comment did get a snort out of me. "Understatement," I told her. "What's more peculiar is that at first, I was attacking him as well…" I stopped, remembering that. I mean, you know me, I can hardly get two related words to come out when Dean's been on the attack over the time I've known him, yet last night a whole bunch of stuff came out that hadn't really sounded like me.

I rubbed the heel of my hand over my forehead, feeling a slight ache around the temple. "In any case, in the middle of it, I suddenly felt like I wasn't standing in the room any more, like I'd…ceased to exist or something."

"Okay…" Lauren said. "Then what?"

"Then I was wondering how we'd gotten from just having incredibly tender yet mind-blowing sex to yelling at each other and apparently breaking up," I said, a good deal more bluntly than I would've without the anxiety that was twisting up my insides. "He's never mentioned being worried about looking after Sam before. In fact, the last thing he said before that was that Bobby was insisting on going along with them to find the vampires."

She nodded at that. "Dean did look strange this morning," she said. "Distracted and angry about something."

It was when I seemed to be back in the room that he'd changed the course of his arguments, I realised. "When I snapped back into myself, or whatever it was that happened, I wasn't mad anymore."

I hadn't been, I remembered. I'd been calm, and that's when he'd left.

"Well?" I asked her, watching the expressions flit across her face as she thought through everything I'd said.

"I might be reaching again," she warned me, her eyes on mine. "But we've seen this happening already, haven't we?"

"We have?" I looked at her in surprise. Had I been missing monumental events?

She made an impatient gesture at my apparent forgetfulness. "Sam getting hooked by a demon's spell from Becky?" she said. "Crowley getting inexplicably stronger? And Dean and Sam retreading issues that they've already been through?"

"You think this is a part of the story re-write?" I asked, trying to ignore the flutter of hope in my stomach.

"How many times are there two separate problems working in tandem?"

I hoped that was a rhetorical question because it sure wasn't one I could answer at this minute, but I shook my head. "If all of this, everything that's going on, is a re-write, why now?"

"Actually, the question is why at all? Why target the Winchesters? Is it who they are or what they're doing or what they're going to do?" she asked, leaning back in her chair.

All very good questions, I thought, looking at her. None of which I could think of a single answer to.

Lauren stared blankly into space for a minute or two, then she said, in a very thoughtful tone, "The other thing, Terry, is that you weren't sucked into it."

I got what she meant and remembered the last time that'd happened. "You're right."

When Balthazar had changed the time lines, I'd been outside of that, able to remember the real time-line where we were supposed to be.

"Does that help?" I asked her nervously.

"It might help a lot," she said, sitting up straighter. "If Metatron is forcing Dean and Sam to follow his script, somehow, the fact that he can't force you to do the same might mean we can wreck his efforts."

"How?"

"I don't know, but I don't think he brought you here," she said, her eyes losing focus again.

Of course, that made me wonder who, or probably more pertinently, _what_, had.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It was five days before they got back. Over that time, I had swung from one extreme end of the pendulum's arc to the other and back again more times than I could count. There's a deep vulnerability to loving someone that makes objective reasoning often ride off into the distance without looking back. I could see Lauren's point about the possibilities of this all being orchestrated by a being that was, like a kid pulling the wings off a fly or angling a magnifying glass onto an ant's nest, bored and destructively inclined. At the same time, I could also see that Dean might not want to be tied down, even emotionally, at this time. He might need to be able to focus on his brother and closing Hell.

I was standing in the library, my insides shaking and my palms sweating when the front door ker-lunkered and the three men shambled down the stairs, boots ringing on the iron treads. Sam pulled me aside as soon as he'd finished hugging Lauren, dragging me down to the apothecary with some lame excuse about a pulled muscle in his back. I'd felt Dean's gaze on me when they'd come in but every time I'd looked at him, he'd looked somewhere else, so I was guessing that the situation was still the same as when he'd left.

Sam pushed open the door at the end of the still room and we walked into the store-room behind it, sitting on crates amidst a cacophony of slightly dusty and weird smells.

"What happened between you and Dean?" he asked me, leaning forward intently.

"I don't know," I said, truthfully enough at that point, wiping my still-damp palms on my jeans. "Why?"

"Because he's been acting bizarre for the last five days," Sam said irritably, running both hands through his hair as he sat up, making it stick out in several directions.

"What happened on the island?" I asked him, curious about what he might term 'bizarre' when it came to his brother. It's a pretty broad definition, don't you think? "Did you clean out the nest?"

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding distractedly. "We got there just as a boat came back, waited until midday and went in." He looked down at the floor. "Dean was – he was all over the place, Terry. One minute, he was like a damned robot, planning on how we'd get over there, what we'd do, pulling up floor plans of the house on the island…the next, he'd get up and leave the room and drive off somewhere and he was shaking when he did it, even Bobby saw it."

"What about on the island?"

"That was worse," Sam said, shaking his head. "We started off fine. We each took a floor, got in okay and took down about six of them. Then Dean found a blood slave and he seemed to be having some kind of melt-down about one of the vampires, kept saying he couldn't understand it. The woman he'd found must have been turned sometime in the last twelve hours, because she attacked him and he just stood there, then one of the vampires killed her, and saved him. Then he wouldn't kill the vampire even with the damned thing begging him to."

I listened to him, hearing the disbelief in his voice at the same time as I was wondering if this was Dean fighting against what he was supposed to be doing. Saving vampires was something he usually had to be talked into. And he'd never, ever frozen on a job. Had never, in my knowledge, stood there and waited to be killed. Ever.

"Did you or Bobby hear his conversations with the vampire?"

"Some of it, we got to the basement in time to see the woman attack, but what he said, didn't make that much sense, and then we got just the mixed up crap he came out with when the vamp was finally dead," Sam said. "Bobby tried to get it straight but he wasn't very coherent when we got back to the mainland, just kept saying he didn't understand and asking us what he was doing. We couldn't figure out what he was talking about."

I couldn't make sense of that either, but it sounded more like an internal conflict. I sucked in a deep breath and looked down at my hands, loosely clasped together on my lap. "The night before you left, Dean – well he told me that he couldn't keep you safe because he wasn't prioritising things the right way, then he said that he – he said that he didn't love me and never would."

It surprised me how much that hurt to say out loud, even when I'd been over and over the conversation in my head endlessly in the last few days. Sam's silence finally made me look up.

"I don't believe that."

"Yeah, well, I'm having trouble with it too," I said, as casually as I could.

"There's no way, Terry – no way he feels like that." He looked at the store-room door and got to his feet. "This is – look, whatever's going on –"

"Sam, it might be bigger than this," I said, a bit unwillingly since I didn't have a shred of proof for our speculations. We'd been leap-frogging along based on the way he and Dean had been acting since Kevin had turned up, and it was all just…well, maybe wishful thinking on my part at least.

"What do you mean?" He stopped at the door and looked back at me.

"Talk to Lauren first, okay?" I thought she'd be more convincing about the background of the scribe than I could be. "Then talk to Dean."

His forehead wrinkled up questioningly and I waved my hand at the door. "Just talk to Lauren first."

"Alright."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Bobby beat Sam to the talk with Dean anyway, taking him down to the garage and apparently dragging the details of not only what had happened on Prentiss Island, but what had happened here before they'd left as well.

He came marching back up the stairs, his craggy face taut with tension and asked me if we could talk. It would've felt like a French farce if we'd been going in and out bedrooms, but everyone seemed happy enough to find store-rooms or in the case of Bobby, the library stacks at the top of the building. I didn't think I'd ever been up and down the stairs so many times in one day. Since I was also too nervous to eat, my stomach muscles felt like piano strings as I climbed the stairs. Or possibly Spaghetti-Os.

I walked to my window seat and sat down and he dragged a chair over and dropped into it, fixing me with an exasperated stare.

"I just talked to Dean," he said as I sat on the window seat and he dropped like a stone into the chair nearby. "What the hell is going on?"

I blinked at him, wondering why on earth he thought I'd know. "What did he say?"

"He said a whole truckful of nonsense at first," Bobby told me, pushing his cap back on his head as he scratched at one eyebrow. "That he was putting everyone in danger, that he had to look after Sam, that was his job, that he couldn't concentrate," he carried on, lifting his head to look at me. "That he didn't think he could stay here because it was too confusing."

That was a new one on me. "Too confusing?"

Bobby huffed out a lungful of air exasperatedly and shook his head. "Like I said, he wasn't making a lick of sense, but he seems to have gotten in his head that you betrayed him, told him you cared about him when you don't."

"What!?"

"Yeah, okay," he said, holding up his hands in a pacifying gesture. "I know, I told him that was bullshit but he wouldn't let it go."

"Why? How?" I stared at him disbelievingly. I mean, I'd understood how he'd gotten to not being able to protect Sam if he was also worried about me, about us, but this was off the scale.

"I don't know, he wasn't all that coherent about it," Bobby said sourly.

"What happened in the nest, Bobby?" I asked, trying to shove it aside and focus on how things had gotten from bad to really bad so quickly.

"It was assloads of weird," he said. "Dean was down in the basement and he found what he thought was a blood slave – you know what that is?"

I nodded. The concept had been played with a few times on the show, since the first season.

"Well he'd just freed her when one of the vamps we must'a missed came in. Told Dean that the woman was the love of his life or somethin' and begged him not to hurt her."

I frowned at that. Vampires weren't usually so emotionally involved.

"Anyway, it didn't matter 'cause it seemed like she'd been turned, but hadn't fed," Bobby said, heaving in a deep breath. "She attacked Dean as Sam and me were coming down to see what was takin' so long."

He hesitated a little, looking at the floor. "We were on the stairs, Dean was in the middle of the basement. The woman – the new vamp – flew at him and I saw him watch her coming. He didn't move, Terry," he said, looking up at me worriedly. "Didn't even lift his machete. If it hadn't been for the other vamp, he'd been dead right now."

The shiver that rocked me then started down in my toes and ran all the way up to the crown of my head, and I had a hard time getting rid of it.

"The other vamp hit her as she knocked Dean to the floor, and pulled her off. Grabbed Dean's machete and took her head," he continued. "Sam and me were down there too by that time, and it didn't even acknowledge us, just looked down at the woman it'd killed. Then it asked Dean to kill it."

"And he didn't," I said.

"Wouldn't even take the blade back," Bobby recalled, his voice incredulous. "Sam killed it, and Dean walked out, never even looked back."

"What did he say about that?" I could visualise it happening, but I couldn't imagine why.

"He said he froze up, but he was lyin'," Bobby said bitterly. "I don't know why. Then he said that he couldn't've done it. I asked him what he was talking about – he said he couldn't've killed you."

I blinked again. "If I was turned, you mean?" I asked, trying to make sense of it.

Bobby shrugged. "Damned if I know what he meant," he said gruffly. "He said you'd manipulated him and trapped him and he still couldn't do it."

Ever had a lot of ice-water on a hot day? Felt it just about freeze your insides? That's exactly how I felt at that moment. Snap-frozen from the inside-out. There was a part of me, the emotional part, I guess, that couldn't make sense of it. The more rational part was perversely glad to hear it. It meant that it wasn't Dean talking. He'd never had a reason to think I'd do that and I dragged in a deep breath, unfolding myself from the window seat and looking at Bobby.

"This might be a lot bigger than that," I said, wondering where to start with my explanations.

"Ya think?" Bobby said, ahead of me already. "Something's messing with him –"

"Him and Sam," I said, leaning my elbows on my knees. "They got through a lot of their problems and now they're recurring again, as if the past never happened."

He nodded. "Saw that too," he admitted. "Thought it was just them, you know, but now…question is, what can we do about it?"

I stared at him blankly. I had no clue. How could anyone convince Dean – or his brother – that their history was being re-written and they were being forced into doing and thinking and feeling things that weren't real?

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

What I kept thinking about was a movie I'd seen, back in my old life, called The Manchurian Candidate. It was about brainwashing and substituting memories and implanting commands to create an untraceable assassin. One of the things that had come out of the movie had been the human mind's inability to be forced to lie to itself. I think they were a bit naïve in that, 'cause I know – knew – lots of people who had no problems with self-delusion, myself included from time to time, but there was a marked difference between rationalising certain things for one's own benefit, and being forced to swallow something that the mind knows didn't really happen.

In any case, it did make me wonder if the end game wasn't something along those lines as well. If maybe, somewhere down the line, even if they were sure they weren't being manipulated, maybe Sam or maybe Dean would do something to create a situation that would make Metatron's efforts worthwhile.

It seemed nuts, right? An archangel, fooling around with people to force a situation onto the human population? Real fiction stuff. Maybe even worthy of a tv show. It didn't mean that wasn't happening, right here and right now. There is a reason that the old cliché, truth is stranger than fiction, is a cliché, after all.

Lauren and Bobby tried to talk to the brothers, singly and together over the next two days. I don't know where Dean was sleeping, in one of the other bedrooms, I guessed, since he hadn't come back to our room. His clothes had disappeared from the drawers and hangers one day, but he'd left his albums and photos and the weapons there. It made me wonder if God's scribe was doing such a good job of writing the brothers as he obviously thought he was.

In the end, it took all of us, walking them back through their memories and what I'd seen of what had happened to them over the past couple of years to even admit to the possibility that there were discrepancies – heh, big, great, gaping holes more likely – there that were inexplicable. Dean called Cas.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The silence in the library was heavy. Lauren, Bobby, Sam, Charlie and I sat around one of the library tables. The Trans were staying out of it, Kevin still reading the tablet and his mom still transcribing his notes. Dean was seated at the other, Cas standing in front of him, the angel's fingertips resting lightly against Dean's forehead.

After several minutes, Cas stepped back, breaking the contact and Dean blinked a few times, lifting a hand and wiping it over his face as he looked up at the angel.

"Well?"

"They're right," Cas said, his expression troubled. "A little under four weeks ago, I think. Your memories stop, then start again, but they look different. Truncated and hazy. Is that how you see them?"

Dean's gaze flicked toward the table where the rest of us were sitting uncomfortably then he nodded. "More like something I saw than something I lived," he admitted.

Castiel looked at Lauren. "And you think the Scribe is here, on earth, doing this?"

"Who else has that power, Cas?" she asked him. "Who else could bend some realities but not affect others?"

He tucked his chin against his chest, his hands locking behind his back. "Heaven has been looking for Metatron for more than a thousand years."

"The order would have been the perfect hiding place for him," Sam said, unconsciously rubbing the heel of his hand against his temple. I wasn't the only one who noticed that, along with the twitch of a wince, as if he had a headache developing. "He would have access to whatever Heaven was doing, with the Legacies who were still keeping in contact?"

"The order ceased communications with Heaven when this group was attacked," Cas said shortly. "Their homes and the libraries of information were warded against angels."

"Even better," Bobby said. "That way none of the god squad could recognise him through his disguise."

"Perhaps," Cas allowed. "I must seek counsel about this. It's –" He looked at Dean unhappily. "There has to be a reason he's chosen this way to stop you and Sam from doing what you were doing."

"He's a dick," Dean mumbled, looking at the floor.

"Yes," Cas agreed, straight-faced. "But another reason as well."

"Cas, you need to get rid of these fake memories," Sam said, looking at Dean. "Half the time, I don't know what I'm remembering."

"If I could do that now, I would, Sam," Cas said, shaking his head. "I will need help for this. In the meantime, you must add this to the protections around the bunker. It will keep further meddling from the scribe from affecting you while you're here – I will find out if there's anything we can do about something more portable."

He set his hand on the table next to Dean and a piece of parchment appeared under it, inscribed with several symbols.

"The sigils must be of gold," he said to Dean. "Pure, embedded into the building or it will not keep his power at bay."

"Awesome," Dean said, looking at the paper. "Usual points of the compass, or do we need to do more?"

"Each direction, above and below," Cas said, as if it was something he'd memorised. Did angels have to memorise their lore, I wondered irrelevantly, or was it something they'd been programmed with when they'd been made? Something struck me about that as being odd.

"Pure gold won't adhere to anything," Bobby remarked, too late as the room filled with the restless sound of rustling wings and the angel vanished.

Charlie looked at him, one brow arched. "Sure it will, if its melted and poured into place."

Dean looked at her, his gaze sliding over me without pausing. "Well, we got work to do."

Bobby nodded, his glance at me telling me he'd noticed the snub. "Let's get on with it."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Don't let anyone tell you how nice gold is – it's not. It's soft and annoying and really, really heavy and it can nearly break your toe if you drop some onto your foot, even if you're wearing boots.

The melting was done in the bunker's armoury workshop and it all looked pretty medieval, what with the stink of molten metal and the burners going and Charlie, Dean, Sam and Bobby all wearing welding masks and thick reinforced gloves and the steam and the glow of the furnace. It took three days for Dean and Bobby to carve the sigils into the stone and concrete of the floors, one against each of east, west, north and south-facing walls, one on the roof and one on the lowest of the basement levels' floor.

Cas didn't show up again, and he wouldn't be able to enter the bunker once the sigils were in place. They were like a solid wall to angelic entities, he'd said. He literally couldn't cross one.

I don't really know what we were expecting would happen, when the last one was poured and had cooled to solidity in its channels. Dean and Sam returning to their old memories, maybe? When nothing did happen, Bobby caught my eye and jerked his head upwards, indicating, I thought, that he wanted to talk.

I walked up the stairs to the top floor, curling into the window seat and waiting. He showed up a few minutes later.

"Sam seems to be either less affected by this, or he's recovering better," he said, sitting down in the chair and looking at me. "Probably because he's got Lauren to talk to."

I shook my head. "Dean doesn't want to talk."

"He may not want to, but he has to."

"It's not much good looking at me, Bobby," I said, feeling a trickle of alarm at the suggestion. "He thinks I'm one of the bad guys."

"He did," Bobby allowed reluctantly. "I don't think he does now."

I shook my head. "Cas said he would be back, he'd help them get it straight."

"You gunna wait for Cas, Therese? Dean already looks like someone kicked his dog clear across the state – he needs someone to talk to now," Bobby said forcefully.

"He won't talk to me," I said, certain of it.

Bobby heaved a slightly dramatic sigh. "This is hard, sure. But I got an idea that you're the only one he's gonna be able to talk to, because you're the only one who can tell him which memories are real and which ones are fakes."

I hate it when he takes that tone, that reasonable, rational, logical tone, with me.

"I could make it worse," I told him, hearing the thrum of my fear clear in my voice. That was why I hadn't even tried, had turned away if he was the only one in the room, had walked in the opposite direction when I saw him coming. I didn't want to talk to him. Didn't want to hear the worst.

"Yeah, or you could make it better," Bobby pointed out.

Right now, I could tell myself that it was like Sam's getting married to Becky – just a kind of a spell, one that the angels could undo when they finally remembered us and got back here. If I cornered Dean and talked to him…and he said that it was all true…even that pretence would be gone and I'd have to deal with the consequences.

I think I've probably mentioned once or twice that I'm not one of the world's stock of brave people. I don't hide under the bed when I hear a noise in the dark (although I do think about that option, just as a last resort) but I probably wouldn't be the lady getting up, grabbing the baseball bat and charging out into the hall, yelling at whatever it is to show itself either.

"Therese, I can't force you to talk to him," Bobby said heavily, looking at me from under the shadow of his cap. "But you remember this, if the positions were reversed, you know he'd try whatever it took to get you back."

I looked away at that. Darned old man had nailed it with that statement and I knew it was true. Dean would be just as scared as I was in the same position, but he'd try, even if it hurt like heck. He'd try.

Bobby got up and walked away, leaving me crunched into the corner of the window seat feeling like the world's smallest heel. After a while I got up and walked slowly downstairs, wondering where I'd find Dean.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

As it turned out, I didn't have to look for him. He came and found me.

I was sitting in the bedroom, putting off the moment when I needed to get up and start searching the bunker, and there was a knock on the door. Getting up, I had a brief moment of déjà vu as I walked to open it and saw Dean standing there, his gaze lifting reluctantly from the floor to my face.

"Bobby said you wanted to talk?" he asked, his tone every bit as reluctant as his stance.

"I didn't play you," I said, the words coming out without me thinking about them.

"Yeah, I got that," he said, taking it as an invitation to enter and walking past me. He stopped in the middle of the room as I shut the door and turned to face him. He was looking around, as if the things he could see were all strange to him, not his own.

"However it happened," he said, turning around. "It's a mess. In my head."

I nodded and walked slowly past him to the desk, taking the chair there as he backed up and sat on the bed.

"Lauren and Bobby said that's why Sam and me got tangled up in that spectre business," he continued, his gaze drifting around the room and stopping on the grouped photos on the bureau. "All the crap we went through, before Sam went into the cage, last year, that was all erased and replaced with something else."

"The books the order has here on Metatron said he can re-write people's stories," I offered hesitantly. "Change their memories of what had happened."

"Why would anything have that power?" Dean wondered, then shook his head, looking at me. "What I said to you, before the vamp nest – I don't think it was true, but I don't know, not for sure."

"I understand." Two of the hardest words I've ever had to force out of my mouth.

"It doesn't match up with the memories of things before that," he said cautiously. "And, if I try to dig deeper, I start to feel weird."

"Like a headache?"

"Starts that way," he said. "After a while it feels like maybe my brain's boiling in my skull."

Vivid, I thought. "Sam seemed to having headaches too."

His eyes widened a little and I wondered if that had triggered a different memory.

"He had one when I played Lauren's voice mail to him too, when he was married to Becky," he said, his eyes narrowing. "You think that was because some part of him knew it couldn't be real?"

"I don't know," I said, thinking that very thing. "I think the mind has its own mechanisms for defending against things that are forced on it," I added, a bit more slowly. "I think it can baulk at a lie and try to force the truth to come out."

He looked away and I wondered if anything had made him feel that he'd been fed a lie.

"What happened in the nest, Dean?"

It seemed to be the right question, because he relaxed a bit. "I – there was –" he stopped abruptly and looked at the floor. "I can't explain it. One minute, it was all just the job. The next – it was like I was in a different life."

"What did the vampire say to you?" I was curious about that because it seemed like one of the points that both Sam and Bobby had said he'd changed.

"He, uh, he said that, uh, the woman, the blood slave, and him were – in love. Together," he told me disjointedly. "Said that he'd stopped working for the nest, that they were going to leave the others."

"A vampire in love?" I asked, not bothering to hide my own incredulity.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he agreed immediately. "Told me that he'd been on her yacht, and he was supposed to kill her, but he couldn't. They'd, uh, sailed off. Then the nest had found them."

"And when he realised that she'd been turned?" Sailing together into the sunset. It was romantic, although the more pragmatic side of me couldn't help but wonder what the vampire had been living off while they were out at sea.

"He looked like – he looked like someone had knifed him in the guts," Dean said, his eyes darkening with that memory. "I don't know what happened, I couldn't move. I just froze, in between them. I could see her teeth, coming down and I knew she was going to attack, but I just – couldn't – move."

He looked at me. "It wasn't her," he said slowly. "It was the vamp. He couldn't believe it. And I couldn't believe it had that much impact on him."

Clearing his throat, he continued, "I watched everything he'd felt for her drain right out of him. What he'd felt, what he'd loved, was her humanity."

I wasn't surprised Dean had seen that in the vampire. He saw, with a deep compassion and an empathy for others' emotions, people's feelings very easily. Maybe because he felt deeply as well. I was surprised that he could talk about it.

"You think that dick angel meant her to kill me?" he asked, rubbing his hand over his jaw and down the line of stubble on his throat. "Wrote it that way?"

I did. I couldn't imagine why, if he'd had other plans for the Winchesters, but when I visualised what Dean had described, I thought that's exactly what Metatron had wanted. Sam alone, maybe? Bobby devastated? The vampire – was the love of the vampire something he'd put in or something outside of his control?

"I thought about you, then," Dean said, and I felt my heart almost stop in my chest in shock at the words.

"Bobby said that you told him you couldn't have killed me," I said, making it not quite a question.

Emotion flitted over his face, gone too fast for me to work out what it'd been. He shook his head.

"I couldn't have," he said, lifting one shoulder in a resigned shrug. "I knew that and the next thing I knew my head was pounding like one of those giant migraines, where you can't take noise or light or movement or any fucking thing because your brain might explode."

"Do you think the headache – the weird feeling are coming when you remember something different from what you've been –" I tried to think of a word to describe what was going on. "– implanted with?"

His mouth twisted up mockingly to one side. "Implanted?"

"You know what I mean," I said, waving my hand vaguely. I didn't know what to call it.

"It feels like that," he said warily. "Feels like if I just accept what's going on, it's all good. If something is different, or if it feels wrong, that's when the pain starts."

"What about now?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. Guess that means the sigils are working?"

"Not much good if those memories are still there, making you doubt what you know…or feel," I said, a touch more honestly than I probably should've been.

There were a million things I wanted to ask him, but I couldn't. He'd said he didn't know if what he'd said was real or not. If he didn't know, I couldn't think of a way to help him to find out.

"Do you remember killing Paris Hilton?" I asked, deciding it would be safer to go back further, start from where it'd been simple…well, more simple.

He nodded. "Yeah, skinny but packed a punch," he said, his grin without much humour in it. He looked down for a moment. "Sam killed her."

"She would've turned into your father," I said, knowing exactly how much he'd feared that. He looked up, a bit surprised, I think. "And after, you told Sam that you were as much to blame for Lucifer being out as he was."

He frowned slightly, brows pulling together. "He – I – did I?"

"You don't remember that?"

"Sort of," he said. He leaned forward, knuckling his forehead. "But it's – I don't know – blurred, I can't remember exactly what I said."

"You said you weren't Mr Innocent in all of it, you broke the first seal," I supplied. I thought he'd turn away or clam up when I said it. Not exactly the best memory to bring up, but it's what he'd said to Sam at the time.

"He told me, uh, he told me that we should, uh –" The frown got deeper as he struggled to recall what his brother had said.

"He told you that it was time to stop worrying about Lucifer and Michael, and to fight together," I said.

"Yeah." But he didn't sound certain.

"Dean, you told him that you'd been so worried about watching his every move, that you hadn't seen what it was doing to him," I added, more than a bit embarrassed that I knew these lines by heart. Still, he didn't seem to notice that, looking up at me, nodding slightly. "You said you were sorry for that, and Sam accepted it. And he said that you had to fight together on the same level, and you agreed to that."

There was a flicker of recognition in his face, as if the memory had returned, then his eyes screwed tightly shut and he pressed his hand against one temple, half-turning away.

"You saw it, didn't you?" I said, getting up.

He nodded, his jaw clenched tight.

"And when Sam told you how he wanted to deal with Lucifer?" I pressed, walking toward him.

The only answer I got was a groan, and he toppled sideways onto the bed. Something was resisting those memories.

"Dean, stay here," I told him, probably unnecessarily since he didn't look like he could see, let alone walk. I opened the door and raced down the hall, sling-shotting around the banister post and down the stairs. There had to be something in the order's drugstore to deal with a blinding headache and maybe brainwashing.

I don't know why Lauren or I didn't think of it earlier. Dumb, maybe? Too wrapped up in our fears and speculations to see the forest for the trees – or is it the trees for the forest? – whatever. The darned pharmacy had the cure for vampirism, for cryin' out loud, it had to have something to counteract what the brothers were going through.

Stopping in the doorway, I stared blankly around the packed shelves, wondering where and how to start, then I remembered the card index and ran to it. I started with 'headache', feverishly skimming through the listings. Near the end of the section there was a card that had a footnote to severe headache, cross-referenced to memory. I jumped over to the 'M's and starting looking for 'memory'.

Another footnote led me to 'alternative past' and another to 'implanted event memories' – why that wasn't under 'memory' I didn't know – but it had a recipe for a potion that claimed to be able to undo spells and curses that had overwritten memories with new ones, provided the old ones were still there. I thought they were. If they hadn't been, Dean wouldn't have been getting the pain.

It wasn't already made up, on the shelves, and I went back to the book, going to the store-room and hoping that everything would be there. Potion-making, beginners, I thought, moving along the shelves as fast as I could, not wanting to miss anything but aware that Dean's brain might be leaking out his ears if he kept trying to remember and the headache got worse.

I had a stack of boxes and small, fabric bags gathered into my arms when I found the last ingredient – powdered lamia teeth, if you can believe that – and I went back to the still room, setting them on the preparation table and grabbing the old-fashioned stone mortar and pestle and propping the book up against the wall as I followed the instructions. I had a new respect for Hermione and Snape by the time I was finished. It's a fiddly, annoying, precision-oriented job to make a magic potion. I didn't think I was all that naturally gifted at it, but I was hoping that I'd done a good enough job this time.

The resulting liquid was a greeny-grey, as the book said it should be. It was also very thick and clung to the spoon I'd used to mix it together and it stunk like month-old rotted vegetables. I hoped that Dean was going to be able to swallow it without heaving it back out again. I thought of all the times he'd drunk foul stuff and decided his stomach must be pretty strong.

The instructions had said that it was a single dose, and each dose had to be made fresh and one at a time, not in bulk. Carrying the glass beaker back up the stairs carefully, I couldn't help but wonder why on earth anyone, let alone an archangel who'd been in hiding on earth for centuries, would be worried about re-setting the brothers' memories. It was a waste of time worrying about it since I certainly wasn't going to come up with an answer but it really was bugging me that I couldn't even get close to a motivation.

Pushing the bedroom door open, I was relieved and alarmed to see Dean lying on the bed, his face chalk-white and his breath whistling softly, both hands pressed tight to his skull.

"Sit up," I said peremptorily to him, holding the beaker and closing my hand around his coat lapel to pull him up. His nose wrinkled up in disgust the second it caught wind of the potion and he squinted at me.

"You trying to put me outta my misery?"

"Yeah," I said, as no-nonsense as a veteran nurse. I really was learning a lot of new skills in this life. "Drink."

"Agggh." He turned his head away as I brought the beaker close to his mouth. "C'mon, I'll hurl."

"Dean."

He managed to get his eyes to open a little bit wider, peering at the potion then at me.

"Trust me, okay?"

I don't know if that did it, or what he was thinking, but he sucked down a deep breath, took the glass from me and closed his eyes, lifting it and tipping the whole lot into his mouth, swallowing as fast as he could.

When it was gone, he held out the beaker and tucked his chin down hard, lips compressed tightly together, his eyes closed and watering, the tears running down his cheeks.

It took about three or four minutes before he looked up, took another breath and wiped the moisture from his face impatiently, moving his tongue around in his mouth, trying to get rid of the taste.

"Blech."

"I know," I said, taking the beaker and putting it on the nightstand. "It didn't smell real good."

"Ack."

For a moment, I was worried that I'd done the wrong potion and had removed his ability to speak since he was only making noises that indicated varying levels of disgust.

Then he felt his temple gingerly, and looked around. "It's gone."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Sam turned a murky shade of green when he filled his mouth with the potion, and I'm pretty sure it was only the sight of Dean's mocking smirk that enabled him to swallow and keep the gross stuff down.

The book with the potion's recipe in it was cross-referenced to another book on the magic-and-spells section of the library and Laure and Bobby read through the series of interlinked spells that was in the blackest section of the book on black magic, both of their expressions showing their distaste for the subject.

"The constructed memories are disengaged from the memory cells of the brain," Lauren read out loud. "The spell is not broken nor is the intent of the magician denied, only the physical aspects are removed."

"But you think it's not a spell," Sam said, his forehead wrinkling up in little furrows.

"Doesn't matter if it is, or not," Bobby told him, leaning over Lauren's shoulder. "The potion works on wiping out anything that's not supposed to be there. Damn…didn't know there were spells like this in the world."

He made a face as he read further. "The heart of a nephilim, a Cupid's Bow, the Grace of an angel…now what the hell –"

Stopping as he caught sight of Lauren's severely disapproving look, Bobby shrugged. "Just sayin', who knew?"

"What do we do about it?" Dean asked truculently. Since Sam had swallowed the potion and the two of them had gone through their shared history, a lot of things that had been tense in one or both had vanished. But Dean was still pissed and under his mostly neutral and only slightly forbidding expression, something was eating at him. "Not like I can carve out and pour gold onto or into the car. We go back out there and can that dick see us again? Fuck with us again?"

"Cas said he was looking for something portable –" Sam started to say and stopped as Dean swung around to look at him.

"You see Cas here?"

"No, but I mean, give him time," Sam said, a little defensively.

"We don't have time, Sam," Dean said through clenched teeth. "We have a job – the biggest job we ever had – to do and we're trapped in here."

He waved a hand toward the book Lauren was holding. "Isn't there anything in this place to counteract this crap?"

"Probably," Bobby said, his voice gruffly soothing. "But we need a couple of days to look for it."

Dean huffed in frustration but dropped it.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It was well after midnight that we climbed the stairs, and I listened to Dean's tread on the steps behind me, wondering how hard it was going to be to get from here back to where we'd been two weeks ago. The fake memories, along with their burdens of fake concerns and fake thoughts and fake feelings, were gone, but he remembered everything he'd said and done over that time, and neither of us had seemed to have the courage to bring it up. Well, I guess it wouldn't be appropriate in front of everyone else, but I wondered if it would even come up in private. I couldn't figure a good phrasing to ask if what he'd said and felt had been the effects of the false memories or something he was feeling anyway.

As I pushed open the bedroom door, Dean reached out, his hand closing around my wrist. I looked around at him.

"You want me to stay somewhere else?" he asked.

"Do you want to stay somewhere else?" I countered, that being the first thing I thought of that didn't expose me entirely.

He grimaced, just a little at the stale-mate, looking down the hall. "I didn't mean what I said to you," he said, a bit distantly. "That wasn't me."

"It was a little bit you," I contradicted as gently as I could. "You want to back up and look after your brother."

For a moment, he said nothing, then he turned back to me, his face settling into a hard expression.

"I do want to make sure Sam has the best chance possible of doing this and walking away afterward," he said, leaning close. "But I'd get out of it if you asked me to, Terry. I can't keep giving up what I want, I _won't_ keep doing it, I can't lose you."

He was close enough that I could feel his breath against my mouth, close enough that the familiar and comforting scents of the car, leather, whiskey and gun oil enveloped me, close enough to see a fear in his eyes that he already had, that what he'd said had somehow killed how I felt.

I kind of wanted to laugh, probably mild hysteria, at that thought. If someone else had said that to me, and walked away, I'd have accepted it, told myself I was best rid of such an asshole and gotten over it. Then again, I'd never been in love with anyone else, so it would've been easy to do it that way.

To tell you the truth, the idea of sneaking away and going to lick my wounds in private had occurred to me. I hadn't done it because it meant giving up. And giving up meant dying. Not all at once, not in a big dramatic Juliet kind of way, but little by little, every day, for the rest of my life. Like I said, I'm not brave. I couldn't face the thought of that, even it meant being hurt and humiliated more if it'd turned out that Dean really had felt that way.

I was beginning to understand something I'd known but never really thought about before. Love, and I mean real love, the sort that does actually last more than a lifetime, can't exist in a vacuum. I might've mentioned that a while ago. You just can't sustain feelings like that if the other person doesn't feel the same way. It needs two. I hadn't lost one drop of the way I'd felt. Ergo…as they say…

"You can't lose me," I said to him, my voice all froggy and rough from some obstruction in my throat as all those thoughts ran willy-nilly through my head. "You can tell me to leave, you can walk away, but you can't stop me from feeling the way I do about you."

He blinked, and I suddenly realised he'd been holding his breath as he sucked a massive mouthful of air and he stepped forward, his arms going around me and his head bowing to rest his cheek against mine. I hugged him back, guessing that he'd been as worried about the conversation as I had. That we'd somehow got past this point, where a misunderstanding would have been all too easy if one or the other of us had been more circumspect, more protective of ourselves, whatever…it just brought it home to me that the long haul is only possible when being honest is more important than being safe.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

* * *

_**AN:**__ Firstly, let me just say Sorry! to anyone who's been hanging for this chapter. I had a little mini-meltdown with the season's ending (and middle and beginning) this year, and I was shocked to find it really affected the writing. I am hoping that I'll get back into the swing of things and put that behind me, but just in case it wants to linger on, let me just say that I am going to finish this story definitely, it might not be as fast as some of us would like, that's all._

* * *

So, before you go thinking, okey-_dokey_, everything's good again, I gotta tell ya that it wasn't. Sorry.

It was awkward and difficult and emotionally like an out-of-control roller-coaster. Honestly, I'd like to shoot those movie folks who like to show a couple, having gone through hell of one kind or another, just falling back into the tender, trusting state of lust they were deliriously locked into before hell took over. It doesn't happen like that. You heard it here first.

Long story short. I cried a bit. He looked guilty. We talked, touched, tried, got tangled up, didn't know what exactly was wrong and got tangled up some more. I think it was more of a tacit agreement to try and get some sleep, somewhere close to sun-up, and that was better. Don't ask me why.

In the morning, I left Dean still sleeping, lying on his stomach with one arm flung out and off the side of the bed, his face more peaceful than I'd seen it in a while. I hoped he was either not dreaming at all, or dreaming something good, because he needed some kind of respite from all the crap.

In the kitchen, I made a pot of coffee, yawning wide enough to practically dislocate my jaw, and looked around when Lauren staggered in. She looked like she'd had the same sort of night I had.

"What happened to you?"

My somewhat jocular expression vanished when her eyes met mine. "Something's wrong with Sam," she said, her tone clearly indicating that it was no joke.

"The memories –?" I started to ask and she shook her head. Reaching up for a couple of cups, I frowned at the near-empty shelf, glancing into the sink. There were only two there and only four on the shelf and I could've sworn that the order had had at least thirty when we'd moved in.

"No, not that," she said, taking the cup I poured for her and swallowing a couple of mouthfuls of scalding brew. "Something else."

"To do with the trials?" The thought wiped the worry about missing cups clean out of my head.

"I think so."

"What happened?" I asked again, pushing her to a chair at the table and sitting down next to her.

"He's running a fever, and it's not that bad," she said, staring into her cup. "But nothing is touching it, and – and every time he does fall asleep, he's having nightmares. Horrible ones."

"There's a syrup, in the cupboard –" I suggested and she nodded, forestalling me.

"Yeah, tried that," she told me. "I spent a lot of the night in the apothecary looking for anything that would help with both the fever and the nightmares."

"Did you talk to Kevin?"

"He's neck-deep in the tablet and Linda won't let me in the door," she said, her mouth tightening slightly. "I don't blame her, but it has to be the trials, doesn't it? Metatron can't change things here now."

Sam came in the door then, giving us a pale and strained version of his morning smile and dropping into a chair next to Lauren. He didn't look too awful, more like he hadn't had a good night's sleep, rather than being really ill or anything, but he didn't look exactly good either.

"What can I get you?" I asked, standing up. If Kevin was translating, then Mrs Tran wouldn't be around until he'd stopped. She worried about him constantly.

"Coffee," he said, leaning his head on one hand and half-closing his eyes. "Thanks."

Lauren gave me a meaningful stare and I went and grabbed a cup, pouring him a coffee. I put a couple of slices of toast in the toaster as well, figuring that if he didn't feel like them, I could always eat them.

Bobby trudged into the room a moment later and dropped into a chair at the end of the table. I knew what he'd want. The toast popped a moment later and I put two buttered slices in front of Sam and watched him chew disinterestedly on them.

"What the hell happened to you?" the old hunter asked Sam gruffly, finally noticing that Sam wasn't looking great.

"Bad night," Lauren said answered for Sam, watching him worriedly.

To my surprise, Bobby didn't make light of it at all. "What kind of bad night?"

"Fever, nightmares, no sleep," Sam said, yawning.

"Fever?"

Lauren nodded. "Why?"

"Mebbe nothing," Bobby said, a little late for hedging, I thought.

He was lucky that Dean wandered into the kitchen at that moment, also yawning, almost as widely as his brother, but without the slightly ill look under it. I added more eggs and bacon to the skillet and started juggling hot toast, butter and cold bread, waving a hand at the coffee pot to indicate that he could get his own joe.

"The hell happened to you?" Dean asked Sam, brows drawing together as he got a good look at his brother when he'd carried his cup to the table,.

Sam shook his head and gave up on the toast. He got up and walked out, and Lauren watched him leave the room then turned to Bobby.

"Alright, what do you know?"

Bobby ducked his head. "Nothing – yet," he said. "Lemme check it out."

"What's going on?" Dean looked from Lauren to Bobby.

"What's wrong with Sam?" Charlie asked, striding into the kitchen and lifting her chin to smell the cooking food appreciatively. "Any chance I can get some of that?"

I nodded, adding more bacon and more eggs and sliding the cooked ones onto plates for Bobby and Dean. I wondered vaguely if I could get a job in town as a short-order cook.

Lauren rolled her eyes in exasperation, clearly not up to the task of repeating herself again, and got up, giving Bobby a piercing stare before she left the kitchen.

"Something I said?" Charlie asked, looking at the glum faces surrounding her. "I've got good news, I'm nearly done with the database structure," she added, pausing expectantly and pouting when the desired response didn't immediately manifest. "Don't everyone thank me at once."

Bobby grunted over his plate and Dean ignored her. I flipped eggs and waved the spatula in the air.

"That's good, it's great," I said to her, seeing that I was going to be the only one who was likely to fill the conversational gap. "Sam just had a bad night. When can we start with the entries?"

"A few days," Charlie said, wandering across the kitchen to the coffee pot. "I could use a hand with the first few, just to test that it's all working."

Dean's phone rang as I scooped Charlie's breakfast and my own onto plates and turned off the stove.

"Don't look at me," Bobby growled at her. "I've got too much to do back home."

"You're going?" I asked, and my voice rose to a new squeaky-high level. It'd been so good to have him around the last couple of weeks, for so many reasons, I didn't want him to go.

Charlie sat down, shrugging. "I don't care who it is," she said, stabbing her food. "I just need any warm body – who isn't a total techno-phobe."

"What?" Dean said into the momentary silence of the room, pressing his cell hard against the side of his head. I thought of brain damage and dismissed it. He'd had that many head injuries a few radio waves weren't likely to have that much of a impact. "Wait a – hang on, I need a –"

He got up and walked out of the kitchen and Bobby heaved a sigh, turning his head to look at me.

"You alright?"

I nodded, having just stuffed a forkful of food into my mouth. I was, somewhat surprisingly. Sam's problem, Charlie's demand, even Bobby's announcement, had pushed the mess of my emotions to the far background and I figured I'd cope better with that for a while, until the memories had dimmed a bit more.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Bobby left an hour later, and I followed Charlie down to the sub-sub-basement, listening distractedly as she told me all about the database, it's capabilities and, I guess, a bunch of other stuff about it that I unfortunately half-tuned out. Dean had come back into the kitchen to finish his breakfast and had said that the phone call had been from an old friend, calling in a favour. He didn't seem to want to be more specific than that and had gone off as soon as he'd eaten, looking for Sam.

I didn't think Sam was in a state to be going anywhere but I'd kept that to myself, agreeing half-heartedly when Charlie fixed me with a gimlet-eyed stare and demanded that I help her with the testing.

She had the massive room set up comfortably, and I realised where all our ever-disappearing coffee cups had all gone to. They were sitting all over the horizontal surfaces of the room, on the shelves and tables, in little groups on the floor next to the long sofa she'd been using as a bed, lined up along the high back of the order's mainframe computer's console. Looking into one, I recoiled at the living forest of soft, spongy things I could see growing on the surface of the liquid that half filled the cup.

"Charlie, you could, uh, take some of these upstairs, once in a while," I muttered at her as she waved a hand toward the terminal she'd set up.

She ignored that, of course, and I sat down, making a mental note to come down here with a freaking laundry basket and hazmat suit to collect them all.

"Here's the entry screen," she said, hitting a key and bringing up a plain data form. "If you're working from a new file, just select 'File' and you'll get the relevant fields – who worked on the case, what happened, all that stuff," she added, hitting another key. "If you're working from a book, select Resource and you'll get the fields to uniquely identify the resource. Clear?"

As mud, I thought, looking at the screen. "Sure," I said out loud. "You want a few of each?"

"Yeah, I brought some books down from the library, you just scan each of the pages in, and you'll get the option to select the text and any drawings or photographs separately. The text has to be scanned as readable so that we can run searches on it. Any drawings, symbols, hieroglyphics or photographs, ditto. I've got a separate module for image matching built-in so if you run across them in the field, you'll get a match from here if the data's in."

She dragged in a deep breath and hit another key, and another screen popped up, the cursor blinking cheerfully in the first field, tacitly pressuring me to enter something in there.

"Okay, start with Sam's notes on the vamp case, and see how it goes and then we'll do a book." She swung away, walking fast around the mainframe's console and disappearing behind it.

I looked at the field, found Sam's notes in a manila folder on the counter surface beside me and started to type.

After fifteen minutes, my fingers and wrists were aching faintly and I'd entered all the information that the notes held. There were thankfully no photographs, drawings or symbols to be scanned in and I'd filled in most of the fields. I hadn't done much typing, even for the job I'd had in my old world, and I looked at the filing tray that was filled with similar manila folders with the sort of trepidation I used to feel for dental visits.

"Terry?"

Turning around in relief, I called out, "Here."

Dean came into the room, brows shooting up as he saw the computer, piles of books and files and me.

"Uh, you busy?"

I looked at the desk and let out a small exhale. I really wanted to say no.

"Yeah, kind of," I said instead.

"Well, whatever you're doing, it'll have to wait –"

"Oh, no," Charlie said, jack-in-the-boxing out from behind the boxy console. "No, no, no, no, no. I just got her and I need someone to test this."

Dean looked at her, rising to the challenge. "Yeah, well, Sam's out of action and I need some back up."

"She's not a hunter!"

"She's not a–a–" he lost the words, waving his hand around at the computer and files instead. "Whatever you want her to be, either!"

You might think that it would be nice to be fought over like this, but unfortunately it was only my usefulness they were arguing about, not me, per se.

"How's Sam?" I interjected and Dean turned to look at me, his expression still pugnacious.

"Tired, mostly," he said grudgingly. "Fever's gone, Lauren said."

"Maybe Sam and Lauren could help out here, Charlie?" I suggested, looking over the console at her as I got up. "You don't need that many of each source to make sure it's all working, do you?"

"Good idea," Dean said instantly, looking at the programmer determinedly. "I'll go get 'em."

"Fine," Charlie said to his retreating back. She turned to me. "How much use is Sam going to be if he's tired?"

I thought of the all-nighters we'd pulled, researching last year and smiled at her. "Research is something Sam excels at even if he's half-asleep," I told her. "And Lauren's pretty much the same."

"Fine."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The Impala growled along the interstate and I listened to Dean talk about his friend, James. James, the cop.

The cop in St Louis.

"Uh, I know Charlie did a good clean up of the federal and state databases," I ventured, when he stopped talking. "But St Louis? How easily are you going to be able to get around there? A lot of those cops are going to remember you, clean record or not."

He flicked a sidelong look at me. "Why do you think I need you along?"

It could've been the world's most unromantic statement. I'm not sure, I'd need a judge's ruling on that. To be honest, I didn't know whether to be mad at him or just laugh. I decided against either, and pretended to ignore it.

"What did he say about these killings?"

"Well, he didn't have much time to explain," he hedged, changing lanes to get around a truck. "He said he'd explain when we got there."

"But he's still a cop?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding in acknowledgement it was likely to be an issue. "The case he helped out with, he was a flatfoot back then. Now he's in Homicide, apparently."

"That's a fast promotion for just two or three years," I said, wondering why it'd leapt out at me.

"I guess he's good at it," he said. The turn-off for the city was signposted ahead and it'd been dark for nearly an hour.

"You want to see him straight away?" I asked as he slowed for the exit. I was hungry, tired and not really in the mood for a boys' reunion tonight.

"No," Dean said, checking his mirrors when a silver sedan seemed to veer too close to us. "No, we'll get a room, see him tomorrow."

Following the traffic flow into the city, Dean saw the motel five minutes later and pulled in, getting the room and driving up to the front of it. It was actually refreshing to carry the gear inside, pull out a canister of salt and run it around the possible entry points. Does that sound sad? Maybe it was. Dean was grinning at me when he noticed me doing it.

"Nice job," he said, leaning against the counter of the little kitchen. "I thought we could, uh, have dinner somewhere, you know, uh, a bit more upmarket tonight."

I looked at him in disbelief. "A date? You want to go on a date tonight and you didn't mention it before we left?"

"Uh, well –" he said, shifting his feet in discomfort as he tried to work out what he'd said or done wrong.

"I didn't bring anything suitable to wear on a date, Dean," I explained crossly. "Just –"

I waved my hand in the direction of my tough Army-surplus duffle bag, words failing me. A date. Our first in months. And he couldn't even warn me.

"Doesn't have to be that fancy," he said, suddenly grasping the problem. "I just meant, you know, somewhere simple."

I don't know why we seemed to be talking two different languages all of a sudden. I felt all my emotions run out and puddle around my feet, and I stared at the floor, not sure of what to do or say. He didn't seem to know either.

"Uh," I made a monumental effort to retrieve some kind of coherent thought. "Okay, lemme have five minutes for a shower, and we'll find somewhere … simple."

It would have to be simple, I thought. I had jeans. Period. Oh, and sneakers. Not even decent shoes, just sneakers. I exhaled noisily as I marched across the room to the bathroom.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The little restaurant was simple, but also nice, an intimate Italian place with a bar and a number of tables scattered around a room that seemed to have been built by a madman in love with nooks, alcoves and corners. It can't have been more than about twenty yards long but we couldn't see the bar from our table, and in fact, only one other table was in view, about ten feet away, the couple sitting at it involved in some deep conversation that required a lot of staring into each others eyes. Dean looked at them for a moment or two and turned away, shifting his chair slightly so he wouldn't catch sight of them again.

"So, you think it's something to do with the trial and the spell?" he asked me, picking up a hunk of garlic bread when the waiter brought the basket, and taking a big bite.

"Lauren said that most of God's tests require a lot from the testee," I told him. I wasn't on very firm ground, not being religious myself, but I'd seen enough of the old biblical films to know that usually there was some kind of price to pay. Bobby had hinted at it as well and he knew the Bible a heck of a lot better than I did.

"Like," I added, thinking over those Cecil B. plots. "Personal sacrifices, tests of faith…that kind of thing."

I could see he didn't think much of that, although he was living proof of it himself.

"Dean, Cas told you that he was commanded to raise you from Hell because he had work for you," I said, sipping my wine as all the events of that season suddenly came back.

He snorted, swallowing the bread and washing it down with his beer. "Some work," he said a second later. "I couldn't stop Sam from killing Lilith and all I did in Stull was get in the way."

I looked at him a little open-mouthed with disbelief. "You gave him the key to getting hold of Lucifer," I said.

He looked away, then shook his head. "I don't know what your show said," he said slowly. "But that's not what happened."

The memory of the scene was bright and painful in my mind's eye. Dean lying half-or-mostly-dead on the windshield of the Impala, Lucifer beating the crap out of him, then a glint of light and beyond it, one of Dean's toy soldiers, jammed in the ashtray in the car door, a wealth of memories, of love, it'd seemed to me, giving Sam the strength he'd needed to lock the fallen angel down in his mind.

"He was going to kill me," Dean said softly and I looked up at him, wondering how clear the memories were to him. He'd been hanging onto consciousness by a thread, I'd thought, not exactly the most alert for total recall.

"He was going to do it using Sam's body so that Sam would know, once and for all, just who was going to be boss," he continued, staring at the basket of bread on the table between us. "And I couldn't do anything to stop that, couldn't even see by the time he stopped."

I hesitated for a moment, because I really wasn't sure if the writer had imagined something that hadn't really happened, or if Dean had been too out of it at the time to recognise it.

"He stopped because you were there," I said, sort of finding a middle ground between the two. No matter what, I think Sam would not have found the strength and courage if Dean hadn't been there. They kind of gave each other that, mostly without even realising it.

He shook his head dismissively. "He stopped because he was stronger," he said, his eyes closing briefly. "Of the two of us, Sam always was. Always knew what he wanted and went after it, never let anything get in the way."

Now, I really didn't know what to say to that. Of course I jumped to the first conclusion to pop into my head. We were outside the bunker, in a city, not even protected by the salt and sigils of our room.

"Is Metatron working on you again?" I asked, leaning across the table and almost knocking my glass over in my haste to look hard at his eyes.

He frowned at me. "No."

"Dean, c'mon, that's not true and you know it," I persisted, glancing around at the couple at the next table, wondering if they were angels or demons in disguise. I didn't used to be a fan of paranoia, until I realised everyone just might be out to get me.

He huffed. "Sam never wanted this life and he got out," he said, dropping his voice a little. "He went to college, found a girl–"

"You wanted to be a hunter," I reminded him. "You wanted to save people."

"I did whatever my dad told me to," he countered, a flash of pain crossing his face. "I was a grunt, I still am, I just don't know who's giving the orders now."

"You don't believe that."

"Terry, I – I didn't go after you, when Cas took back to your world," he said, his head ducking. "I thought – it doesn't matter what I thought, I figured it wasn't for me."

"In case it slipped your mind, you did turn up eventually."

His face screwed up. "The only thing I ever fought for was to keep Sam safe, to do my job," he said. "Not for me, not for what I wanted."

"And how does that make you weak? Giving up what you want for everyone else?"

"It makes me a-a-a dog, an obedient attack dog," he said, and I knew instantly where that'd come from. I still wasn't a hundred percent sure it was all him, but I reached out and curled my fingers around his hand, and his gaze lifted to look at me.

"That wasn't you and it's not who you are. You didn't let yourself want anything, Dean," I said, hoping he'd remember the conversation we'd had about this – about Hell – about his guilt and memories. "How were you supposed to fight for something you didn't believe you wanted? Didn't think you deserved?"

His hand twitched under mine and I thought he was going to pull it away. He didn't, but I saw the muscle bulge out at the point of his jaw as he clenched his teeth against some emotion.

"What do you want?" I asked, very softly. I didn't know if I wanted an answer to that. I didn't know if he even knew the answer to that.

It seemed like he didn't, because he dropped his gaze to the table and shook his head. Like I said, I wasn't sure if I should be relieved or upset, but at least, I thought, it was on the table, out in the open, cards all face up…all the clichés that are fit to print.

The waiter fortuitously chose that moment to appear beside our table and the awkwardness of the moment was buried under considerations of food, drinks and the sort of small talk I used to make fun of my aunt for. Our waiter's name was Paul and he was extremely solicitous, pointing out delicious specials, advising on the Italian wines and generally moving our emotions along from anguish to annoyance in a few minutes.

"Thanks, Paul, we're good," Dean finally said, his expression forbidding as Paul touched my shoulder for the fortieth time and told me that the scallops were cooked to perfection in a sparkling white wine sauce.

"_Grazi_, _si_, _si_, of course, sir," Paul said, bowing and scraping a couple of times in Dean's direction as he backed away from the table. I wondered if he was going to salaam, but he seemed to think better of it, and about-faced, marching off to the kitchen with our order that didn't, alas, include the scallops.

Looking over the table at me, Dean said, "This wasn't such a great idea."

"Maybe we're just trying too hard?" I suggested, picking up the glass of wine and swallowing a big mouthful. It tasted good and I had an idea I could use some help this evening, some kind of dampener on the possible emotional outfall from the conversations we seemed to have to have.

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean…" I looked around at the dim, warm lighting, the peace and quiet around us, the appetising smells coming from the kitchen, waving a hand vaguely to encompass it all. "Maybe we could have a night off from our lives, and just…enjoy?"

He looked at me thoughtfully for a few minutes, turning that new concept over. "Well, the view's pretty good," he said, one side of his mouth lifting. He was looking directly at me and there wasn't a window in our part of the room, so I took it as one of his rare compliments.

"There you go," I told him. "Can't say I'm unhappy with it either."

It seemed to surprise a laugh out of him, and I got my usual reaction to seeing that, sipping another mouthful of the good wine and thinking I would have to keep this up because it was so good to see him uncomplicatedly enjoying himself.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

We got back to the room four hours later, me a little bit unsteady on my pins, and him sober as a judge but, I suspect, enjoying the fact that I wasn't. I leaned against the car as he opened the room door, and he stepped back, holding out his arm and making sure I was good with the kerb, the additional small step of the threshold and not likely to run into the doorframe or trip and sprawl at his feet, both of which had happened in our relatively short time of knowing each other, and I guess were reasonable things to watch out for in the present or future.

He flipped on the light-switch as we managed to make it through the door without anything untoward happening and he turned back to close the door behind as I took in the sight ahead of me and froze completely still.

"You're a cheap drunk, Ter," he was saying as he turned back, following my rigid stare and blinking at the woman on the bed.

She was beautiful – of course, when would he ever get an ordinary-looking woman breaking into his motel room and lying supine on his bed?! – with long, black, wavy hair spilling over her shoulders and framing an oval face. Large dark eyes, a full mouth, made larger and more vivid with an application of bright red lipstick, and high, delicate cheekbones. She was wearing a short, almost-painted-on little black dress, her outfit culminating in sheer stockings and black suede heels. Her voluptuous assets were set off very effectively by a diamond-studded choker around her neck.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, flicking a sideways glance at me at the same time.

She sat up, her gaze on me, swinging her very long legs off the bed and smiling cautiously. "Sorry, I didn't realise you'd have company," she said, getting to her feet. "I'm Portia, James'…friend."

I don't know if he caught that faint hesitation and I wasn't sure what to make of the not-expecting-company remark, but it was, at least, plain that Dean was as surprised by her as I was.

I turned to look at him and saw his eyes narrow sharply. "James didn't call, did he?"

Portia looked at the floor guiltily and I was reminded of something, but I couldn't put my finger on it. She glanced up, looking nervously at him from under her lashes and again there was something very familiar about that expression but I couldn't twig to it.

"No," she said, her eyes flicking uneasily to me and back to him. "He's in trouble but he wouldn't hear of dragging any of his friends into it."

"This is Terry," he said, taking a step closer to me. "Whatever you've got to say, she hears it."

For a moment we all stood there like statues in that kid's game, not moving at all. Then she smiled at me and held out her hand, Dean went to the bar fridge and pulled out a beer for himself, and I shook Portia's hand, feeling an inordinate strength in the light grip. I made a weak after-you gesture at the table, and followed her, sitting down as she pulled out the other chair.

"How'd you get in here?" Dean asked, only a little truculently considering the salt lines were still intact.

"I'm quite skilled at getting into places that others find impossible," she said, not exactly modestly. I glanced at the bed and frowned when I saw a number of short black hairs over the centre of the spread. They weren't ours, we hadn't been the near the bed when we'd arrived, and I couldn't remember seeing them before we'd gone out. Looking back at the woman's long hair, I couldn't see how they could be hers.

"What kind of trouble's he got that he doesn't want to share?" Dean asked her. He looked over at me, caught me staring at the bed and his gaze shifted to the patch as well.

"Someone's targeting him, I think," she said. "He doesn't believe it, but there can't be another explanation."

Neither she nor I saw Dean move exactly. One minute he was leaning up against the kitchenette's narrow counter, a beer in one hand, the next he was behind her chair, the bottle left back on the counter and a long-bladed silver knife at her throat.

"I'm not a skinwalker!" she said, her chin lifting higher as he pressed the silver harder against her neck. The lack of burning must've convinced him because he let her go, taking a long step back and walking around the table and stopping between us.

"Then what are you?" he grated out, jerking his head toward the bed. "We don't shed."

"I'm a familiar," she said, her voice a lot less assured than it'd been a few minutes ago. "The companion of –"

"I know what a familiar is," Dean said shortly. "Never seen one without its witch," he added, pulling out the chair from the table and turning it around, sitting on it facing the back with his arms crossed and the knife gleaming quite evilly in one hand.

"I'm James' companion," Portia said, lifting her hand to her throat and checking her fingertips for blood.

"No," Dean said immediately. "No, that doesn't work for us, see, 'cause that'd mean that James was a –"

"Witch," she finished, looking at him. "Yes, he is."

"James is a cop," Dean said, the truculence much more in view now.

"And a witch, a neutral witch."

"Neutral?"

"Neither black nor white," Portia answered calmly, her eyes steady on his. "His life quest is knowledge, not power."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, right."

"You can scoff and disbelieve if you like, it won't help you to help him, if he is, indeed, your friend." She sat stiffly, her eyes cool and dark.

"Alright," I interrupted, seeing Dean ready to go off on another tangent about his friend. "He's a witch and you're his familiar. Who's targeting him and why?"

"I don't know," she said, turning to look at me. "Someone in our community, someone powerful, powerful enough to be able to induce nightmares, headaches, physical manifestation of a curse or fetch, powerful enough to kill and leave the evidence on James, in his mind, but I can't find them."

"We can't exactly look into this without him knowing," Dean said.

She looked around. "Do you have a pen? Paper?"

I went to the bags and pulled out my folder, extracting a pen and a more or less clean sheet of paper and handing them to her. Must have been a problem carrying things in her other form, I decided. Cat or dog? The guilty look at the floor decided it for me. Cats would never look guilty.

"This is our address," she said, writing it down on the paper. "Be here tomorrow morning, after ten, and I'll make sure he listens."

He took the paper and glanced at me and Portia said, "You don't like dogs, do you?"

From the speed of his response, I would've said she might've touched a nerve. "What makes you say that?"

"You're suspicious," she said to him frankly. "People who are suspicious usually don't."

He blinked at her. "You know what we are – what we do?"

"I know," she said, getting to her feet. "But he's your friend, isn't he? And you owe him."

I blinked at that, turning to look at him as she walked to the room door. He felt the gaze, meeting my eyes for a second then looking at her.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said, opening the door and stepping through. There was a click in the silence as she pulled it shut behind her.

"You owe him?" I asked, not having heard about that before.

"I'm gonna have a shower," he said, picking up his beer and finishing it on his way to the bathroom.

"And then we're gonna discuss this," I muttered as the bathroom door closed.

He took his usual fifteen minutes, and I gave up on the thought of having a quick hot water massage before bed. Instead, I wandered around the room, turned off all the lights except the nightstand lamp, got undressed and got into the bed, lying there wondering what a witch's familiar actually did for a living.

Coming out along with a cloud of steam, Dean threw his clothes on the floor by his side of the bed and dropped his towel on top. He smelled vaguely of the unidentifiable scent of motel soap and warm, clean skin, and he rolled onto his side, looking at me until I turned my head to look back.

"What does a –" I started to say and he shook his head, sending a few warm drops of water over the pillows.

"Nope, not talking about it now," he cut me off firmly, moving closer but still leaving those few inches of space between us, his own personal boundary that I had to breach.

"What do you want, Terry?" he asked a minute later when I didn't move.

I thought about joking, tossing off something to lighten the moment. I decided against it because you just get to a point where it's actually pointless to keep pretending that it doesn't mean the world to you. What's the upside of protecting yourself? Does it matter if this person knows everything? It does, because without that there're too many chances of misunderstanding, of making mistakes based on too little information, of hurt feelings. Total disclosure might seem insane, but it's the only sane path.

Who dares wins, I thought and I rolled over, right into him, leaving not even a fraction of an inch of space between us.

"You," I told him. It was nerve-wracking but at the same time, not. His eyes widened a little as I slid one arm between his neck and shoulder and the other over his ribs and under his arm, brushing my lips lightly over his. "As is. No further modifications required."

I think he was startled. But only for a second.

Like so many other times, he tried to say what he felt with his lips and tongue, with his hands, with that wordless language full of hot-blooded passion and sorrow-edged tenderness and an attention to detail that I couldn't even imagine in anyone else.

It was another night of very little sleep, I have to say, but at least this time, when satiation was reached and sleep came, it was deep and dreamless and filled with the comforting feel and smell and warmth of each other.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It became instantly apparent when we got to James' apartment that Portia had not found the courage to tell James' about us before we arrived. The loft was on the top floor of a modernised warehouse, close to the river, and the dark-haired man who opened the door when Dean hit the buzzer was still tousle-haired and clad only in pyjama bottoms, rubbing his eyes as he looked from me to Dean with an expression that could only be termed befuddlement.

"Dean?"

Dean smiled, a little thinly. "James, we were, uh, in the neighbourhood," he said, apparently forgetting that James hadn't lived here the last time he'd been in St Louis.

Fortunately, our host wasn't in a frame of mind to quibble the little details, and he stepped back automatically, holding the door open for us to enter.

"Uh, have a seat," James said, the hand he absently ran through his hair creating more spikes and directional abnormalities than his sleep had. "I'll, uh, get some coffee."

He wandered off and we looked around the big, open-plan space. Being a cop in St Louis appeared to pay very well, I thought. The furniture was modern, expensive and impractical for a man with a dog, a lot of cream upholstery that had to show every short black hair Portia shed.

We'd barely parked our cans on the plush chairs when the disadvantages of an open plan design became immediately apparent.

"You had no right to do this!"

James' voice thundered from somewhere else in the apartment. Portia's voice snapped back immediately, high and shrill, more with fear than anger, I thought.

"I was afraid for your life!"

"My life is none of their business!"

It didn't really sound like he wanted us here, and I glanced at Dean, who shrugged and stared around the room, taking in the state-of-the-art stereo and entertainment system with a somewhat covetous expression.

There was a silence followed by a clicking noise and a sleek Doberman appeared briefly in the wide hall between one end of the loft and a shorter hallway before trotting off down the hall, claws clicking on the hardwood floor.

A moment later, James came out, a robe over his pj bottoms, and went to the kitchen counter, banging and clattering around the coffee pot.

He turned around and walked to the seating area when the hissing and gurgling started, looking curiously at me for a second before turning to Dean.

"Dean."

"Witchcraft, James? Really?" Dean asked, leaning forward. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"You come here to help or pile on?" James asked, dropping into a chair.

Dean shook his head. "I'm just sayin', you screw with that stuff and you fry your wiring."

"Thanks for the tip," James retorted dryly. "Did Portia tell you what's going on?"

"She said she thought you were being targeted, by another witch," I said, wriggling my way out of the depths of the sofa I'd been foolish enough to sit back in. "I'm Terry."

"Terry," he said, looking at me consideringly. "Yeah, well, that's what she thinks."

"How 'bout you take it from the beginning?" Dean suggested. "When did this all start?"

"Three months ago," James said. "I started having headaches, periods of confusion." He looked at me and made a small gesture with his hand. "I'm a homicide detective, the one thing I can't afford to be is confused."

I nodded and he looked back at Dean. "Then the dreams started."

"What kind of dreams?"

"Vivid ones," James said with an expression of distaste. "I could see and hear in them, but I could feel and smell and taste as well. In the dreams, I was killing people, murdering them, in cold blood."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It took James nearly two hours and a pot of coffee to get through the details of what he'd been suffering through. He brought out a shirt, the front covered in blood and tossed it on the low table in front of Dean.

"In the last dream, I was wearing that shirt."

Dean looked at it. "No chance this isn't –"

Leaning to pick it up, James turned it over. His initials had been stitched over the front pocket and Dean exhaled loudly.

"We can help but you gotta do your part," he said to the witch – cop – witch/cop.

"Whatever it takes," James said. "Four people have died, in exactly the same way I've dreamed myself killing them, in the last four weeks. I can't sleep, can't function."

Dean picked up the bag at his feet and inside it, the heavy iron chains clanked when he dumped it on the table. "You're gunna have to stay put," he said. "House arrest until we get to who's doing it."

James' expression was not all that happy, but he nodded anyway.

"If another witch is – somehow – doing this, how hard can it be to find them?" I asked him.

He looked over at me, his face screwing up. "Well, there's something over two hundred practitioners here, in the city alone," he said, and I felt my eyebrows shoot up, catching sight of Dean's doing the same from the corner of my eye.

"What!?"

James shrugged. "The city's on a node, Dean," he explained, waving a hand in the air. "It's always been a centre, that was why Dennisset was practising here when I met you."

He looked at Dean. "Speaking of which, where's Sam?"

Dean looked away and I could see him trying to fabricate some kind of excuse for his brother's absence.

"He's sick," I said, thinking that an elaborate lie really wasn't needed her.

James snorted, shaking his head. "Didn't think hunters got sick."

Dean rolled his eyes as he looked from me to the cop. "I didn't either," he said.

"Is there anyone you can think of who could do this?" I asked.

James' smile faded away as his expression became thoughtful. "No. Portia thinks I'm being targeted because she can't believe anything else," he said, his gaze on the table in front of him. "But the amount of power it would take, the skill required to get into my head, through my protection and into my very dreams – there aren't that many witches here, or anywhere, that strong."

He looked at Dean, his expression frightened. "I'm not convinced that this is a spell. What if it's – just me?"

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Portia returned to the living room a short time later, making a face as she saw the iron chains on the table. Iron, as an element, seemed inimical to a pretty wide range of supernatural creatures, I thought, wondering why that would be. Lauren would know, I decided after mulling it fruitlessly for several minutes.

"You'll have to take them to the Well tonight," James told her as we got up from the chairs.

She nodded, a little reluctantly, I thought, looking at Dean.

"What's the 'Well'?" he asked James, ignoring her look.

"It's a bar," James said matter-of-factly. "It's also neutral ground for the community here. Everyone goes there, but the owner's particular about the rules."

"Taking a hunter in there is not going to endear me to anyone," Portia said.

"Don't tell them he's a hunter," James suggested with a humourless smile.

Dean and I looked at each other with identical misgivings. A whole room full of witches?

"It doesn't open 'til midnight," she said to Dean, ignoring the advice of her witch. "It would be safer for you both if we meet here."

That little bit of information didn't make me feel any better about the place.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"I thought you hated witches?" I asked, back in the motel room, washing down the last of my meal with a mouthful of soda.

Dean looked up from the laptop. "I do," he stated, then frowned. "Mostly."

"Mostly?"

I thought back through the episodes I'd seen with witches. There hadn't been any redeemable ones on the show, I realised. It'd been after I'd arrived here that he and Sam had met witches of a different sort.

"Well, not all witches draw their power from demons," he said, leaning back in his chair with a huffing exhale. "We don't usually even hear about the rest of them, the white or neutral ones. They don't go 'round trying to kill people."

"You knew about the other kinds?" I asked, a little miffed. For five years, the show had been fixated on the devil-worshipping ones.

He gave me a look. "Sure. Why?"

"Nothing," I muttered. It was the same deal as the damned pie, I thought. Dumb-ass writers who couldn't get off their lazy butts to do a little research or thought their idea was better. I got up from the table and flounced across the room indignantly, taking my trash to the can.

When I turned around, Dean was watching me, his expression amused.

"What?"

"The hell you so upset about?" he asked.

I shook my head. Even if I could've explained it, I didn't think he'd get the emotional side of it.

"Where do we start looking for a witch that's powerful enough to do this but that James doesn't already know about?" I asked instead, and he looked back at the screen of the laptop, shrugging.

"Got me." He hit a couple of keys. "Even the witches who aren't out to rule the world are close-mouthed about what they do and how they work."

"So the covens, familiars, broomsticks – all that's real and a part of it?" The image of Samantha popped into my head involuntarily.

"Covens and familiars, yeah," he said, giving me another amused look. "Broomsticks, not so much. I thought you were reading up on the order books?"

"Wishing Sam was here now?" I asked him, lifting my chin.

That got an outright guffaw and he glanced at the bed and shook his head. "Nah, figure you'll make up for your shortcomings in other ways."

"Gee, my heart's all a-flutter, however will I resist that charm?"

"You won't," he said, with an expression that could only be called a smirk on his face.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Portia led the way down the garbage-filled, dark and mug-me-now-looking alley, picking her way fastidiously over the trash that had spilled from bags and boxes in four-inch gold lame stiletto heels.

When we'd arrived at James' apartment, I'd felt distinctly under-dressed, being in jeans, a black turtle-neck, with a short dark brown suede jacket over it. I thought I'd looked alright for a bar, but when Portia opened the door, I realised I'd seriously underestimated the night life of witches.

I had to say, I felt a lot better stomping carelessly through the trash in my boots right at this minute, but I had the impression that would change once we got inside of wherever it was we were going.

She stopped at an unmarked steel door, pulling her burgundy velvet wrap closer around her shoulders, and knocked on it. One of those slot-type peep holes opened up and a voice came out of the slit of darkness. I couldn't tell if it was male or female.

"Name?"

"Portia Canino," she said, glancing around at Dean and me. "And guests," she added. The slot slammed shut and there were a number of clicks and clunks as what sounded like ten locks were undone, unbolted and drawn back. The door opened, but not very widely and a balding, wrinkled head popped out. I still couldn't tell if the doorkeeper was male or female. There was a beard covering the lower half of the seamed face and bushy grey eyebrows practically hiding its eyes, but it seemed to be wearing a long dress and there was a buxom curve filling out the bodice.

"Who're you?"

"This is Dean Magus and Terry Godspeed," Portia said hurriedly. "They're Wiccans, Siobhan, and my friends."

"Wiccans? None of that veggie-crystal-sun-worshipping-moon-goddess-Gaia-crap here," she – it? I still wasn't sure – warned us. Dean blinked at her and shook his head, speechless for once.

The door opened more widely and Portia walked through. I followed her, hearing Dean's footsteps right behind me as the door slammed shut and the interminable echoes of the locks being redone resounded in the short brick corridor. Portia opened another door, at the end, and we stepped out into a completely different world.

I'd like to say that I wasn't as a bug-eyed and open-mouthed as a country bumpkin on her first city visit here, but unfortunately I can't. We came out of the ugly back-alley entrance into a huge marble-lined foyer, lit by chandeliers that gave the whole place a golden-fairy-glow, and Portia shrugged her wrap from her shoulders, handing it without looking to a very tall, thin valet who appeared from nowhere. He gave me the creeps, to be honest, the length of his limbs putting me in mind of spiders. I shook my head at him when he turned to me and held out his hand, hoping that indicated that I preferred to keep my jacket on. Dean just ignored him, walking past with his torn and patched Navy coat, moderately clean jeans and scuffed steel-capped boots, and following Portia down a curving set of marble stairs.

Music was playing somewhere ahead, a techno-pop tune with a heavy beat that I guess could've been playing at any club. At the bottom of the stairs, the bar – or club – or lounge – proper sprawled out in front of us. A long, wide room, with a high ceiling, a sinuously curving bar, dozens of different-sized tables in the centre and big sofas and armchairs in casual or intimate groupings around the walls. The lighting was a uniform gold, several crystal chandeliers hanging overhead and dozens of Tiffany-styled lamps on the tables.

Having gone in such detail about the décor, I should point out here that it was the customers who really got my attention. It's not like I haven't been in fancy places before, but usually clientele were boring. Here, they were…well…interesting, to say the least. And not human, most of them. Nor, I need to add quickly, was I the only one rubber-necking. Dean was practically pirouetting after Portia, staring at the group at one table who looked like…well, they looked a bit like aliens, actually, with really, really long necks and eyes that were all the same excruciatingly vivid neon yellow…at the group of vampires sharing what looked a gallon-jug of blood, all sucking at it through straws…at the two girls who walked past him…

He very nearly followed them, his eyes half-closed and mouth hanging open as they smiled knowingly at each other. I think he would've if he hadn't run straight into me.

"Huh, sorry," he said, blinking rapidly. Behind him, Portia rolled her eyes.

"Don't you know how to behave in public?" she hissed at him. "Don't stare and you won't get sucked into the spells that they can't help emitting."

"What?"

"What?" I added, repressing a contradictory desire to immediately swing around and stare at the girls. It was the sort of feeling I sometimes got if I stood on the top of a very high building or cliff, a kind of wondering about just leaning a bit further forward. Yeah. I know.

"They're sirens," Portia snapped. She seemed to be regretting bringing us here, her gaze zapping around the room to see if anyone had noticed Dean's faux pas.

"This is neutral ground, James told you that," she added, lowering her voice. "Everyone and every_thing_ is here and the only way it works is mutual respect, so don't stare, don't comment and follow me!"

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~


End file.
